Back At You
by Ianuaria
Summary: "It was pedestrian, so dirty and common." in reverse. Addek,someMerDer,hints of Maddison.
1. Chapter 1

_**Very short beginning of a new story, and a storyline I don't think I've seen before.**_

 _ **Tell me if you like it!**_

* * *

 _This is worse than senior prom_ he's thinking as he takes a gulp of lukewarm, unfortunately non-spiked punch, strolling around the room - well, the lobby, really - that is packed mostly with squealing teenagers and sulky doctors.

At least at senior prom there was Susie Marlowe's see through dress. And he had Mark to tell him what to do, after.

Which is ironic, seeing as Mark is the reason why he hasn't the faintest idea what to do now, at this prom, with his wife.

 _Addison..._ He'd started to say, and when she looked at him her eyes were so uncertain, so scared, that he swallowed whatever he was about to say and asked her to the prom instead.

So he picked her up at eight, dutiful cheek kisses and ritualistic hand holding and he was even going to say _you look nice_ although why she needs to be told that after eleven years of marriage he has no idea. She always looks nice. Beautiful,even. It's one thing about her that's comfortingly constant.

But he said it anyway. Wait. Did he? No?

Whatever. She knows he thinks she's pretty. He married her, didn't he? And he stayed with her even after what she did.

He deserves a little leeway here.

 _ **..**_

"Have you seen Meredith?"

 _Good question._

Has he _seen_ Meredith? Of course he has. She's all he sees. Everywhere. All the time.

But as of now, right at this minute, he hasn't, and since he doubts Dandridge is asking about his mental status, he tells him he hasn't seen Meredith.

Maybe she's not here yet. Maybe she's not coming at all, and he can spend one evening pretending not to see right through his wife.

His wife, who is twirling prettily on the dance floor in Richard's exceedingly capable arms, in a red dress he's sure he's never seen before, her hair in that complicated style he's never been able to understand even with his surgeon's fingers.

His wife, who moved her entire life to this city he knows she hates, who lives in his trailer even though it drives her crazy, who has been his wife for eleven years, who he can see is literally killing herself to make amends for the damage she did to their marriage, who thinks - or has deluded herself into thinking - that he is trying too.

Trying to salvage what's left of them, trying to forget Meredith, trying to pay attention to her, trying not to scan the room every two minutes for a glimpse of blonde curls.

Trying, and failing miserably, and hiding it-he thinks-admirably.

And then she's there, coming down the stairs in a slinky black number that looks like nothing Addison would wear, like that one princess - the one in blue, maybe?- and for a fleeting, terrifying moment, he cannot stop looking at her.

And she's looking at him too. Or not. Maybe she's looking at Dandridge. Yes, that's it.

No, she's definitely looking at him, lips slightly parted, her pale eyes indecipherable from this distance.

But then he feels the ring burning into his finger, hears Addison laugh across the room, a real laugh, not forced the way she does with him, the vet pops up and her arms go sliding around his neck, and the moment is gone. And he's relieved. Because he's married.

To Addison, who is now in front of him, wrinkling her nose at the things floating in the punch and saying something about Star Wars _(what?)_ and then she's snapping her fingers, that mischievous glint he used to love in her eyes, and she's asking him to dance.

 _Dance_. They used to be that couple, the one who danced and kissed and touched and generally nauseated everyone around them.

Now they just stick to nauseating each other; because that's what he feels, _nauseated_ , at the pathetic remorseful mess she's become, and he's pretty sure she's not too enamored with his half hearted attempts at their marriage.

But he twists his lips into something he thinks a smile might look like and lets her lead, his fingers brushing over her rings as she presses a hand to his chest and looking over her bare shoulder as she murmurs something in his ear.

And _she's_ looking at him too, looking at him as she twines skinny arms around Dandridge's neck and her lips are agonisingly close to his ear and his arms are around her but she's looking at him and suddenly there's no point pretending anymore, and he whispers about needing to check on a patient at the same time Meredith flutters tiny ineffectual hands around her face, backing away from her date.

There's no point pretending to care about what Addison's saying, there's no point caring that she's just ditched her date in a roomful of strangers,by here's no point to any of it anymore because no matter what he _can't stop looking at her._

She drives him crazy, she makes it impossible for him to feel normal, she makes him sick at the thought of that... _veterinarian_ touching her with his hands.

Almost as sick as the thought of Mark touching Addison. Maybe more.

Yes, definitely more.

 _Leave me alone_ she begs in a voice that threatens tears, and since that is the one thing he has proven himself incapable of, he follows her into that exam room and one of them has shut the door and she's glaring at him and he's glaring back because he's married and he has _responsibilities_ \- he spits the word like it tastes bad. It does. - and he would rather be looking at his wife- who, he reminds himself, is currently not a hundred feet away.

"What are we going to do?" she echoes his thoughts.

 _What are we going to do?_

She looks so young, so vulnerable. Unmarked.

They could be anything.

But he's married, and apparently Finn has plans and Finn is good for her.

 _What are we going to do_ she asks him, and he leans in, hands tangling in her carefully arranged curls, tugging her closer, seeking her like a drowning man - _it's like I was drowning and you saved me_ \- and then he has her pinned against the table and he's fisting a handful of black satin, tucking it into his pocket, and she's all he knows, and she gasps into his ear just as he nips at her shoulder and she's pushing him away, and he eases back just enough to track her horrified gaze to the door.

Just in time to catch a glimpse of red chiffon, red hair, red lips, red eyes.

 _We're not DerekandAddison anymore._

* * *

 ** _Soo...should I continue? Do you guys want a monologue type thing? POVs? Just these two fools or other characters too?_**

 ** _I have a pretty good idea where I'll go with this if I continue, but as always I'd love to hear from you!_**

 ** _And I know you think I'm totally loco starting a new story when I'm already drowning in my WIPs... hehe. I'll update those as soon as I can. Promise._**

 ** _Please review!_**


	2. Chapter 2

**_You guys blew my mind with the reviews on the first chapter! Like, to smithereens. Little bitty bits._** ** _I seriously love you so so so much._**

 ** _And now, chapter two, without further ado. (rhyme. haha.)_**

* * *

There are approximately a hundred things she could say to him right now.

Like _oh my god your wife just walked in on us._ Because she did.

Or _that was amazing._ Which it was.

Or _I'm sorry_. Not about the sex. About the look on Addison's face.

But she's Meredith Grey, McAwkward, so she says _what does this mean Derek?_

Three times, actually, while he drags his pants up from around his ankles and knots his tie while he tries to breathe normally and she frantically hunts for her panties and attempts to tame her sex-hair.

He answers her the third time, sounding distant already. _I don't know._

He doesn't know what they're going to do, he doesn't know where her panties are, he doesn't know what this means. Neither does she.

All they know is that whatever this is, they need to be all in or all out. No more halfways and no more maybes.

He's just tucking in his shirt when Callie slams into the room, her strident voice faltering at the obvious scene in front of her.

"It's Izzie," she says softly. "You should come."

And then she ties the sash of her dress for her, a little too tight, and she whispers _for Addison_ as she propels her out the door.

* * *

 _We're AddisonandDerek, we don't quit._

Her voice echoes in his pounding head, shrill and anguished, as he watches Torres drag a wild-eyed Meredith out of the room.

But they do quit. They have. He'll admit he was the first, he withdrew, he was cold and inattentive and indifferent. And then she chose to hurt him in the worst possible way, by sleeping with his best friend.

And then he hurt her in an even worse way; he let her hope that they were getting better when they weren't. He put her back together and then ripped her apart again, and it was easier the second time, tearing her along barely healed fault lines he knows so well.

"Derek," Richard is calling as he races through the silvery lobby, music still thumping behind them.

"I can't." he says automatically.

"Denny Duquette passed away." he says heavily.

"I guess that puts an end to the evening, doesn't it." he replies as he walks through the double doors of the hospital.

It's not raining tonight, it's clear, and out on his - _their_ \- property it'll be beautiful, stars peeking through shadowed trees. She said as much to him, as they left the trailer.

She said _it's beautiful tonight_ and he murmured in agreement but he wasn't looking up at the sky.

There. He did tell her she looked beautiful. He noticed. Somehow, right now, it matters.

* * *

She accused Derek of walking away, of not caring enough to stay. To fight.

But when it came down right down to it, didn't she do the same thing? Maybe they're more alike than she thought. Perfectly matched. Equal.

They hurt each other back, exactly the same way.

What's that trite little line... _opposites attract_ , right?

And _like repels._

Well, maybe they're too much the same. Maybe they've always been pushing away from each other, bouncing off invisible force fields that leave them bruised and sore.

 _Sore_ is what she feels as she flings a few clothes into a suitcase, mindlessly rifling through the racks and racks of things she has no idea why she ever wanted; they're hollow replacements at best for what she's always craved, love and attention and as much as she hates to admit it, approval.

And he's been nothing if not disapproving of her as a whole the last few months , so she does what she knows needs to be done, sliding the rings off her finger with considerably less effort than it used to take. She saves the eating for when she's going through a breakup; during the breakdown she prefers alcohol and it's starting to show.

The dress feels like clouds as it pools at her feet and she kicks at it, annoyed when it tangles around her ankle. He used to like her in red; she spent way too long agonising over this dress in an unfamiliar boutique while a overly made up sales assistant cooed at her credit card.

Well, Finn said it looked nice. That's something.

God. She's clinging to the vet's compliments now, this is even worse than the whole patients husband thing. Next thing she knows she'll be dating him. And then maybe Derek will notice. But it'll be too late, because she's leaving.

It's time to leave, to let go, to move on. It's been like a riptide, this past year, it's caught her up in its fierce rush and torn her far from everything she knows, stripping bits of her away, her confidence and her self esteem and battering her into the barely recognisable woman who stares back with defeated eyes.

The best way to survive a riptide is to let it sweep you out, to go limp and let it run its course, and when it's done with you it'll spit you into still water. Fight, and you'll be dragged under.

If you're lucky, the hardest thing you have to do is swim your exhausted way back to shore; if you're not lucky, well, you drown. It's quick, though. Almost painless.

She's a good swimmer.

There's not much of _them_ in this trailer, she notices now, no framed photographs of cheek kisses and silly smiles, no sentimental mementos or historical items.

There's plenty of him, fishing rods and tackle and damp boots and books everywhere, there's lots of her, clothes and shoes and also books everywhere.

But not much of _them_. It could be two roommates living here, briefly friendly in the mornings when they cross paths over cereal and then bicker about who let the milk run out.

Her phone is right there, a few inches to the left and she could do what she knows makes her feel better. Forget, for a little while.

But it's a sugar rush, sweet and sharp and giddy, fading too fast and leaving her lower than before.

She's going to be stronger this time.

She dresses without hiding in the bathroom for the first time in months, wears her favorite lipstick she's avoided so far in Seattle because it's just one more thing that says _whore_.

It won't matter now. Not where she's going.

One last final touch, a blue plastic folder dug out from where it's taken up residence under her socks, her hand flourishing with finality across the page where the bright pink tab points, _right this way to throw away the last third of your life._

Well, at least she'll be able to fit her name on the line next time she writes it. _Addison Forbes Montgomery - Shepherd_ always was a bit of a mouthful. Like biting off more than she could chew.

She thought she'd cry, right there in that little exam room she's sure has ruined all exam rooms for her for eternity. _(unfortunate, considering her profession)._ Or maybe after, in the taxi with the driver who looked slightly afraid of the blank faced lady in red.

Or maybe now, packing up the dregs of her life.

She doesn't. She can't cry outside of her bedroom. And she doesn't have one here. Apparently she'll just have to wait.

She can't get the door to lock. She wants to just slam the damn thing shut, hope it jams, and seal in the memories of the past year. Suffocate them, the way she's felt for months now.

Screw it. It's not like anyone is out here to break into the tin can anyway. And if they did, they wouldn't find much.

She was hoping for a quick escape, unseen, just get it over with.

No anesthesia.

No such luck. She runs particularly low on it these days.

His headlights swivel across her the way they did on Thanksgiving, when she sat cold and miserable on these same steps for hours while he... she still doesn't know where he was that night.

She knows where he was tonight, though. And that's enough.

Enough to pry her fingers loose from something she should have let go of a long time ago. Holding on has only made it worse.

Let go or let it drag you down.

He's getting out of his car now, running his hands through the hair she was so surprised to see when she first arrived in Seattle. It reminded her of a younger Derek, easy and carefree, like he used to be. Like he was, in Seattle. At least until she showed up.

She rakes her eyes over him one last time, because she's always been a little masochistic, and the sight of his tie, a little askew, knots her throat. No one would have noticed, except for her, because she's the one who tied it for him.

He'll just have to do it on his own now.

He's closer now, still silent, his eyes somewhere by her shoes.

And even now, he can't find a single word to say to her.

* * *

It's drizzling lightly by the time he gets to the trailer, the clouds blocking out the faint stars. He turns into the clearing, breathing in relief when his headlights catch her slim form on the steps, fiddling with the keys.

Is she trying to get in? Or is she locking herself out?

She's changed out of that dress, into clothes that remind him of that first night in Seattle, black on black, her highest heels, hair loose down her back. She looks at him emotionlessly, her ocean eyes raking over him top to toe, pausing once in the middle and he thinks her eyes flicker, but no.

She doesn't cry. He doesn't say anything.

They stand there in some sort of sick staring match, and for the first time in a long while he feels himself drowning in the bottomless pools of her eyes.

"Papers are on the table," she says heavily, the words meaningless through perfectly carved coral lips as she turns away to curl bare fingers around her suitcase. Always the first to turn away.

"Papers?" His tongue feels thick in his mouth, forming words his mind isn't following. He can still taste Meredith on his lips, the warm tingle of cinnamon lip gloss.

She almost rolls her eyes at him then, seems to think better of it, and just waves him towards the open door.

"Keys." she drops cold metal into his palm; his hand rises automatically as she puts hers out and he sees something like disappointment flit across her face, half hidden in the dark, but then she stretches a little taller, shoulders back, chin high.

He still standing frozen when she steps around him, heels clicking purposefully, and he feels her brush by him, warm and familiar.

"Addie."

"Don't call me that," she exhales roughly, but the hollow sound of her shoes on wood has stopped.

"Addison," he tries again. What does he say?

 _I'm sorry?_

 _Stay?_

 _Go?_

She sighs softly, and he hears the rustle of fabric against skin as she turns partway. Waiting.

"Yeah?" she breathes, and he hates himself for the little hitch of hope in her voice.

"Don't...stay." he mumbles.

He can see the arch of a raised eyebrow as she interprets the pause between his words.

"It's better if I go." she whispers.

 _Go_ , such a little word with so much meaning. Go means no more red hair in his face in the morning, no more pointy shoes littering the trailer , no more shrieking and no more running out of hot water and no more passive aggressive bitching. Go means not waking up to her soft warmth curled against him, no more cheating on the Sunday crossword in bed, no more staccato conversations where there's no need to complete sentences because she already knows what he'll say, no more toothpasty kisses and no more shared history.

God, so much history. Nearly sixteen years.

"I can't... don't go." he says lamely, and she makes a noise like a strangled laugh.

"What good would that possibly do?"

He moves closer, trapping her between his body and the chilled metal of the trailer. "This can't be the end, not like this."

She feels stiff and strange against his body, choosing to lean into cold metal instead of him.

" _Don't._ " she snaps as she squirms free; he captures an elbow instead and she steps forward instead of back, eyes glittering with an emotion he's rarely seen in them, pure unadulterated hate.

"Don't touch me with those hands," she says, and her voice is cool like ice water trickling slowly down his back.

He lets go and she spins away, rubbing at her elbow. He's sure he didn't grip that hard.

But then again they're both pretty raw right now.

"I don't know what to do without you." he says honestly, and even he can feel how late he is.

"I'm sure you'll find something to do," she says, her tone light. Conversational. "Grey should be fine entertainment, from what I saw tonight."

 _"Addison."_

"Sorry," she widens her eyes dramatically. "Did I hurt your...feelings?"

"I hurt yours."

"Past tense." she smiles breezily. "Oh look, my cab is here."

"Addie, please. "

"Goodbye, Derek."

"Just... I understand, okay, but this -we're not over, we can't be, so ...tell me where you're going. Please."

The driver is eyeing him suspiciously as he tosses the single suitcase into the trunk, opening the door for her. "Lady, you coming?"

"Just a minute." she says crisply.

"What are you going to do?" he begs, past pride now.

"Swim," she says. Eleven years of marriage and still he needs a thesaurus to decipher her.

"Swim." he repeats, blinking. "And me?"

She shrugs nonchalantly, tossing crimson curls over her shoulder. "I don't know, be happy. Be...shiny,new, whatever. Just don't drown, or stop swimming. Bye, Derek."

* * *

 ** _Okay, so the thing is, you've spoiled me rotten with your reviews and response to the first chapter. I'm a review brat now. I demand them, because I'm that shameless._**

 ** _And also because it helps me understand what you do/don't like, what you'd like to see, and how you feel about what I've written._**

 ** _And also because like I said, I'm shameless._**

 ** _Does anyone read this ranty bit at the ends of chapters? I'm guilty of skipping a few myself, so let's play a game...if you read this far, comment 'Derek is an arse_** ** _._**

 ** _'_** ** _And also, last but not least but definitely unpleasant, school has started again, vacations are over and I'm already drowning a bit so updates won't be as fast... sorry. I still love you guys, and I'll try my best. Stick with me!_**


	3. Chapter 3

_**Thank you, all my usual reviewers, for your feedback!**_

 _ **Silent readers- I'd love to hear from you!**_

 ** _PSA: THIS IS IN NO WAY A MERDER STORY. I REPEAT, NOT A MERDER STORY._**

* * *

Life would be different here, under the sun, with sand in her toes and freedom ahead of her. Or so she thought.

But life has taken a shine to showing her how wrong she is, so it rained her first day here, turning the sea into the same color as the sky and she felt like she was trapped under a gray bowl, slowly drowning in the tears that well up inside her but she doesn't let fall.

She's already given her blood and sweat and tears (far too many already) to Derek Shepherd; she's not giving any more. She's done giving, done apologising, done repenting.

She's different here, she feels like glass. They _treat_ her like glass, these people who used to be her friends. Maybe she _is_ made of glass, blown hollow on the inside, shiny and bright on the outside, perfectly polished, reflecting back at them the image of the Addison they think she is, hard and impenetrable on the outside and brittle enough to break with a single blow.

Maybe that's why he saw straight through her.

They wrap her in their inane chatter and the endless love she's not sure she deserves, cushion her from her memories with wine and chocolate and aimless walks on the beach that in February is still too chilly at night but they don't seem to mind, because she likes it.

She likes walking in the wet strand of deep golden sand at the edge of the water, pressing footprints deep into it, proof that she's not invisible, intangible. That she still exists, outside of the identity she's carried for almost a third of her life.

She likes to stand outside on her cutesy little balcony at night and watch the moon ripple across the dark water, and sometimes Sam is there and he'll smile at her without her having done anything to cause it.

And the day she got here she was so entranced by the sea right in her backyard she walked straight into it, let the waves push and pull at her and marveled that she could still stand - and when she got out Sam was on the beach and he definitely got a wet eyeful but what's a little transparent fabric between friends?

Right?

* * *

Six weeks. It's been six weeks.

It took him just one to cross the continent from side to side, to get enough distance between him and her betrayal so he didn't feel like slamming his car into a tree. Or something.

By now, she could be anywhere.

* * *

She decorates the little beach house at leisure, choosing the delicate eggshell and pastel shades that Derek never liked, fills her days by consulting on a few cases at the practice she secretly thinks is boring as hell, wanders around the sundrenched city.

The sun feels good on her skin, leaching the damp from her bones, and she's pleasantly surprised to discover a soft tan, like she's actually changing color as she changes selves.

She even dresses differently here, bright flowing fabrics and prints instead of her usual blacks and greys, hoping some of the color might seep into her insides. She fingers her long hair one morning, trying not to remember it being bottle blonde, and when she gets up the nerve she flings herself into the snazzy convertible she rented on a whim and has it all cut off, goes home - it still jars a little, to call this _home_ \- but she feels lighter, freer, without the extra weight. He always liked her hair.

And she won't admit it, but she waits, jittery every morning as she holds out her hand for pink message slips at the reception desk, as she sorts through envelopes that tumble through her door, when people come up to her at the hospital. But it's never what she dreads, the thick packet of papers that will bear his signature beneath hers.

It might be better if it _did_ come, she could stop waiting and wondering. She finds herself with a hand on the phone once too often at night, and starts sleeping with it as far from her pillow as possible.

And sometimes the phone rings, and wakes her like he always does because he calls after his day at the hospital is over and there's a small petty part of her that notes that these days, it's never before ten or eleven and sometimes midnight. He only ever works these hours when something's eating him.

But she doesn't answer.

* * *

"She won't answer any of my calls." he says, aware that he sounds petulant.

"Wonder where she got that idea."

"I know what I did was inexcusable, but it's not like she was totally innocent."

"You're both at fault, Derek, equally. It's just that right now, it's your turn to be wrong and her turn to be right."

"Well, I can't have my turn to make it right unless I know where she is."

"Give her her time."

"Richard, please."

"I can't. You know that I can't."

"It's been two months."

"Six weeks."

"She's my _wife_ , Richard. Please."

"Say it like you mean it, Derek, and I might tell you. For now... she's fine. That's all you need to know."

 _Shepherd's losing it_ he hears as he walks down the hall. _He got dumped_.

He did, by Addison, then by Meredith.

She told him the day after Addison vanished, told him she wouldn't be a home wrecker, and if he'd been able to speak at all he would have told her there was no home left to wreck in the first place.

But there _was_ a home, for eleven years and four before that there was a home, warm and happy and loving and it might have been just the two of them, but it was enough.

He's put them back in the drawer he knew all along she hid them in - he's not as unobservant as she thinks he is - burying them under socks she left behind. Maybe she went somewhere warm, but he has trouble imagining Addison under an actually shining sun, maybe with sand and warm breezes. Unless she's changed that drastically.

It hurt, seeing her name -followed by his, maybe for the last time - pressed so hard into the documents that it was carved into the back of the plastic file.

 _Addison Forbes Montgomery-Shepherd._

It was too long to embroider on her lab coats, so she ditched the _Forbes Montgomery_ but kept the _Shepherd_ and it meant the world to him. Did he tell her that? He can't remember.

He does remember the way she looked in that one coat, though, pristine white _(of course_ ) over the salmon scrubs he loved, tight red curls spilling over her shoulders as she smirked at him in the corridor.

 _Oh, so you don't recommend her? Or...just not for her medical skills?_

He remembers that it was slightly too long, slipping over her wrists, starchy new under his fingers as he yanked her into a corner away from curious eyes. But most of all, that after everything she had done to him, done to _them_ , she still had the audacity to put _Addison Shepherd_ in bold blue on the lapel.

So he can be audacious too.

If only he could _find_ her.

* * *

She enjoyed laying low , seeing one - sometimes _two_ \- patients but it only lasted a week before she was dying for the blissfully sterile environment of the OR.

Charlotte smirks in the way that says _told you so_ but she ignores it and grabs shamelessly at the hours she dangles like carrots in front of her, once spending a whole day ensconced in bluish light and whirring machinery. She likes to be in charge, and she has that here. Everyone follows her commands, she's the one who decides what will and will not happen, she literally holds lives in her hands.

Here, she's second best to no one.

And she's always greedily sought the things that make her happy, even if it's a short-lived thrill, so she cuts and sutures and ligates until the board is salivating over her (and Charlotte, the sneaky little...) and anyway, that's how she digs herself into another hole.

It's just to help the patient, she soothes herself. The patient comes first.

She chants it in her mind even as Naomi tries to force more chocolate in her mouth, as she secret-smiles at Pete through his office door, as she studies Charlotte's innocent face from under darkened lashes, wondering if she's done it on purpose.

"Just a consult, Montgomery," she says in that too-thick-to-be-real drawl. "Don' get ya knickers in a twist."

She tries not to feel hurt when Naomi hisses she's more likely to _drop_ them than twist them, and not to read too much into the fact that Pete argues that it's not necessary to have this consult, and that Sam offers to throw a punch or two on her behalf.

And she also tries not to laugh when Naomi reminds him to carry his inhaler, fails, and freezes at the look they give her when she says that divorce hasn't changed them a bit.

* * *

"Richard, I don't have the time for some one-horse hospital in LA, for God's sakes, can't they Medevac the patient?"

The look Richard gives him is enough.

It's his turn now.

* * *

 _ **Review, pretty please?**_

 _ **I love you guys!**_


	4. Chapter 4

**_For Addison-fan, who reminds me to write._**

* * *

In New York, it was salmon, in Seattle, navy. Gray, in med school.

Here she wears scrubs in a strange shade of purple, like a bruise, and it's the small details like this that startle him the most, because she's changed.

In the six weeks since he saw her last, she could be a different person, as he walks up to the plate glass window of the NICU she's smiling, ducking her head as she speaks to a tiny blonde woman; as he steps inside she looks up at the rustle of his plastic gown, and he can see the shutters come down.

The minute blonde turns out to be Charlotte King of the impressively loud voice, the one he's been corresponding with in lieu of Addison.

She leaves him at her mercy with suspicious haste, demanding that they make a decision about a treatment plan as soon as possible.

"Don't let me down, Montgomery." she says as she stalks away, and he wishes he could say the same thing.

 _Montgomery,_ they call her here. She's rid herself of him already.

She's passing him a thick file, crawling with her familiar handwriting, and his eyes rove over it but there's nothing to criticise...and not much he can do, although by the look in her eyes that's not what she wants to hear.

"Addison, I'm -"

"I have a surgery, viewing rooms are down the hall if you need one. The parents will be here soon if you want to talk to them." she says, and to a stranger her voice would sound perfectly polite.

But he's not a stranger. He _knows_ her. At least he used to.

 _She's different_ says Naomi, shaking her head sadly. Sam glares at him balefully until he reminds him he's not exactly a paragon of marital virtue himself.

The practice is calm, quiet, relatively tame. For the life of him, he can't see Addison working here, she needs the blood and sweat and mental exhaustion of surgery like a drug.

There's nothing to be done for the patient, Addison is nowhere to be found, he's had the requisite conversation with the parents. So has she, although when, he has no idea.

She's a ghost, everywhere yet he doesn't see her. She's always just left the room ahead of him, stepped into an elevator, gone into surgery. He camps out in Sam's office for a while, talking about how stupid they both are.

"It felt right, at the time." Sam shrugs, and he feels like someone finally understands him.

The people who work here, they're friendly. Warm. To each other, though, to him they're coolly civil and smoothly excluding. He doesn't like the quack -Pete - he asks too many questions, mainly about his plans for leaving LA. The shrink, Violet, she practically drags him into her office for a very awkward fifteen minutes during which he manages to talk about utterly nothing and she nods sagely like she understands everything.

There's the pediatrician, Cooper, who looks slightly careworn and could do with a shave, but he's nice enough. And there's a blonde child on the reception desk, who eyes him suspiciously every time he asks about when Addison should be back.

All in all, he feels the way Addison must have when she first arrived in Seattle.

And he doesn't like it.

* * *

She likes to be neat. Everything in its place, regimented, organised, so that she can find the things she needs and avoid the things she doesn't want.

She puts her shoes in boxes and her books in alphabetical order on shelves and her clothes by color in her closet. She files away memories based on how badly she wants to forget them.

And after Seattle, she put him in a little tiny box, double duct taped it shut and shoved it in the very darkest recesses of her mind.

And now he's here again and the box is too small, rattling against the base of her skull.

He looks the same. Of course he does, she never imagined for a moment that her absence would affect him much.

She could say something petty, since she has the upper hand now. She could say something cold, see where it hurts him. _If_ it hurts him. She could pretend to ignore him.

But she's vowed to herself - okay, to Naomi - that she's going to be an adult. Mature.

So she calls him Dr. Shepherd, watches the shock on his face, drinking it in like a reward. _Take that._

But then she feels her eyes sting, and her throat feels small, too small and she can't breathe so she leaves him with a resident and buries herself in surgery, stopping only a few times to snap at Dell and tell him to hold Derek off.

He'll be gone soon, back to his rainy little trailer. Back to Seattle, back to Meredith. She wonders if the girl sleeps on the same side of the bed she did, on the same sheets, if she cries in the shower too, if she realises yet the mistake she's making.

Anyway, he'll be gone soon and she can go home, soak herself to wrinkles in the bath and drink by the ocean until she forgets this awful, awful day.

* * *

Sam insists on a beer, for old times sake, and he twinges a little at the word _old_ but goes with him anyway. It's not like she's coming back.

The surfer boy told him she'd gone straight home from the hospital. He looked a bit shifty, but Naomi was standing right there and there was no way to wrangle the truth from him, so now he's here in Sam's car listening to music he's forgotten he used to like, going god knows where but it feels like close to the ocean, he can taste salt in the air and feel the warmth on the breeze.

Okay, forget _close_ to the ocean. He lives practically _in_ it.

"Looks like she made it home," Sam says, sounding relieved.

"Who?"

"Addison," he jerks his finger at the house next door. "Looks like Naomi came too."

* * *

She's just gotten one shoe off when Naomi clatters through the door, soothing her protests with a promise of wine and no questions asked.

Although how that's possible she has no idea, because apparently Violet is missing Alan particularly badly and needs a girls night, which paradoxically involves Cooper, who asked Pete for moral support, which means that Sam has to come so he won't be left out, and since Derek was with him...

Bizzy was a terrible mother in many , many ways but if there's one thing she taught her well it's to be a good hostess, so she rolls her eyes only once, mixes Violet a drink that should knock Alan right out of her head, wraps herself in a jacket and braves the eyes she can feel flitting over her back to sit outside with the girls.

"Men suck." Violet observes morosely, sucking on her olive.

"That's your professional psychiatric analysis?" Naomi asks, grinning a little. Drunk Violet is almost bearable, her flaws on display so that she doesn't feel like she's the only stupid one.

"I need another martini." she groans. "Addison..."

"Coming right up," she pats Violet's shoulder through its curtain of hair.

She's just scooping ice into the shaker when she feels his shadow fall across her back, and suddenly she longs to be back outside on the deck surrounded by cheery voices and drunken giggles. Anywhere but in this tiny kitchen suffocated by memory.

"Addison..."

His voice is soft, gentle. A caress, tugging her down into the swirling morass of things she's trying so hard to forget.

"Can I get you something?" she asks neutrally.

"I'm sorry," he says, leaning against the counter next to her, so close she can feel his warmth but facing the other way, so that she can't see him.

* * *

When he sees her disappear through the glass doors into her ridiculous little house, he feigns needing something and follows her, ignoring Sam's smirk.

She's mixing another drink at the counter, rattling ice in a shaker he doesn't recognise. Their one at home has a telltale little ding in the metal, from a tipsy second- year- resident Mark.

Everything in his life has her in it, on it, she's everywhere except where he wants her the most.

She doesn't turn around.

He says her name, for a second he thinks she might not have heard him, he was so soft, but her shoulders stiffen and he hears her breath catch. Just a little.

"Can I get you anything?"

" I'm sorry," he finds himself saying, not knowing where it came from.

 _She_ never apologised, that night she turned up in the lobby. It's his turn now, but they're playing the game she started and he intended to follow her rules.

So he turns it around quickly, adding "About the patient."

She turns around with a blank expression that only he knows takes herculean effort for her to maintain, he can see the taut jaw and tilted chin and it gives him the faintest twinge of satisfaction to know that he's gotten to her in some way.

"Yeah," she says. "Me too."

* * *

Naomi and Sam have fled the scene, something about Maya and a sleepover they weren't aware was unchaperoned, Cooper has vanished, and Pete hovers uneasily at the edge of the water, keeping an eye on Violet, who has gotten hold of the gin.

Which is good because she isn't crying anymore, and bad because she's laughing hysterically.

"Sorry," Pete says baldly. "I need to go, I'm covering a shift in the ER."

"You can't leave me here," she hisses, indicating Violet slipping precariously closer to the floor and Derek hanging back warily.

"Duty calls," he grins. And brushes his intriguingly rough fingers over her jaw, tantalisingly close. "You can handle it, right?"

"Right," she breathes, stepping away when her brain recovers enough.

"Don't show up in my ER tonight." he calls.

"Don't leave." she counters. She's used him shamelessly, drawing illicit comfort from his flirting and inappropriate comments. She's still - technically- married, after all.

Very technically. She's actually planning to confront him about the divorce tonight. Knowing him, he's probably forgotten to sign the papers.

He brushes his lips ever so slightly over her cheek, skimming the corner of her mouth. "Good luck."

* * *

He watches the shrink slump to the smooth wooden boards of the deck, grinning up at him as she offers him the bottle, sloshing some onto her shirt. He refuses, smiling politely and wondering why the hell it's taking Addison so long to say goodbye to Pete, peeking through the half drawn shades and immediately wishing he hadn't.

It's nothing, really. Chaste, on the cheek. No touching- in fact, he's standing so far from her he could have stood between them. Maybe he should. But then he's gone and Addison is making her way outside again, grimacing at the sight of Violet on her floor.

"Can't you just drive her home?" he asks logically.

"I can't leave her alone, not like this," she snaps, kneeling and hoisting her up by the armpits. "Violet. _Violet_ , get up, honey."

"I think she's pretty much out of it," he hazards, earning himself a glare. "You know how strong your martinis are."

"I know, I know. Everything's my fault." she grumbles, giving up and sinking down beside her friend.

"I'm sorry," he says again, and she just closes her eyes like she's tired.

"Not about the patient," he explains cautiously.

"So...you're sorry Violet is drunk?" she raises a familiar eyebrow. "Or that I make good martinis?"

"Neither." he smiles; her tone is so familiar it fills him with hope. "About prom."

 _Screw the rules._

* * *

He said sorry.

Derek Christopher Shepherd said _sorry_.

To her.

He never says sorry. Not when he forgot her birthday. Or their anniversary. Or his own birthday. Or ever, really.

She can tell she's been staring at him a long time because he starts to look a little uncomfortable.

"Addie?"

The waves are crashing in her ears, chill air nipping at fingers and toes. Alcohol stings her nostrils, and she can feel Violet's fingers limp in her own. His eyes on her, dark shadows circling under the surface.

He's drowning too, she realises. He's hurting too. Like she is.

The thing is, if she grabs hold of him...he could pull her under with him. Drown together.

Or he could keep her afloat.

Sink or swim.

She won't know until she tries. The question is...does she want to?

"Me too."

* * *

 ** _Not to be whiny, but...is anyone reading? The response to the last chapter was a little disheartening and as someone who thrives off feedback, it slows me down a bit._**

 ** _I probably won't be updating as often as I used to , but I'm not running away! Just so you know._** ** _So don't stop reading (or reviewing, smirk smirk.)_**

 ** _Love you guys._**


	5. Chapter 5

**_Sorry for whining about reviews in the last chapter - I had no idea it's summer for most of you!_**

 ** _Enjoy the sunshine, and send a little my way when you get the time to review!_**

 ** _I know, I'm shamelessly greedy. Sorry._**

* * *

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asks, huffing with the effort.

"No." she replies, but she's looking at _him_ , not at Violet's feet, which she's currently lugging up the stairs. "You have a better idea?"

"We could put her on the couch?" he suggests, falling silent at her expression.

"My couch is _white._ And staying that way, thank you very much."

"It'll wash out."

"Some stains don't." she snaps, and then they don't speak again until they've got Violet settled in the guest room - Addison, only Addison, would have a fully prepped guest room - with a glass of water, two Advil and a bucket.

"So I'll, uh, call a taxi." he starts awkwardly as she closes the door on Violet's snores.

She looks relieved, then guilty, and then finally resigned. "Stay. It's late, you can leave in the morning."

"Addison, you don't have to-"

"You're drunk and I'm not the kind of person to let someone wander around an unfamiliar city when I could let them stay."

Okay, so he walked right into that one.

"And besides, I need to talk to you."

* * *

It's late and she's unnervingly sober for this kind of conversation, but it's high time they had it.

So she stalks out onto the deck, knowing he's right behind her - a little too close - and takes a precursory look over at Sam's windows to make sure he isn't home yet.

"Nice ...view." Derek says feebly.

 _He was smoother back in med school_ she thinks derisively. Maybe he's faded over the years.

But then she remembers herself saying something along the same lines in Seattle, so maybe they both peaked years ago.

"The people at the practice seem really great." he attempts when she doesn't reply.

"They are."

"You wanted to talk, Addison, so talk."

* * *

Well, he didn't last long before he snapped at her, and she looks pleased, like she'd expected it and was proven right.

"Sorry if I wasted your time," she smirks, dipping red painted toenails into the sand. "I just wanted to remind you to sign the papers."

"What?"

She looks exasperated. "The papers, Derek, you have to sign them."

"No."

* * *

"No."

His tone rings with finality, determination.

 _No._

Just like that, he expects her to bend for him, accommodate whatever stupid notions he's got in his mind.

"What do you mean, _no_?" she laces the last word with the contempt she feels for every last inch of him.

"I mean _no_ , Addison, as in no, I don't have to sign the papers."

In the words of Miranda Bailey... _whaaaat?_

"They're more than fair, Derek, you know that...have you even _read_ them?"

Typical. He messes up, and then she's expected to do all the work, because it turns out ending a marriage takes a hell of a lot of work.

She'd never realised until recently just how much they shared, stocks and bonds and homes and a name.

"Of course I have. You've given me everything except what I want."

Oh, so now they're this couple, the one who goes to war over vases and wedding china and books.

"I gave you the brownstone and the Hamptons and half of everything else, it's only fair because -" as much as she's loath to admit it - "I started this, it was my mistake, so ...take it."

"I want something else."

What's left? Let's see, there's her trust fund, which she doesn't fully control anyway, there's the futon she's keeping for sentimental reasons, her medical texts he has even less use for than he does for her, and ...her sparkling personality, which he won't be interested in anyway.

She tells him as much, narrowing her eyes when he laughs softly.

"The last thing on that list, Addison, that's all I want."

* * *

In his opinion, it was a pretty good line. Not too cheesy.

He expects a smile, maybe a playful swat on the arm, but not for her to blink suddenly, a sure sign of hidden tears.

"Stop."

She sounds weak, depleted, he can hardly hear her over the sound of crashing waves and loud music somewhere further down the beach.

"Don't do this, please." She's composed herself now, voice brisk, back to business.

"Do what?"

She shifts further from him on the rough hewn wood of the deck, and he trains hs eyes away from her tantalising legs, watching her bury her feet in the sand instead.

He used to do that for her, her feet and then her knees and then up to her waist if she was asleep, pinning her down and enjoying her giggles and screams as he scooped sand over her.

And then he buried his head in the sand, metaphorically, and there weren't any more of those memories.

"Say...things," she says, crossing her arms across her chest like she does when she's feeling vulnerable. "Nice things."

"I can't say nice things to my wife?"

The word feels stiff in his mouth,unfamiliar, like he hasn't said it enough lately. Hasn't had cause to, actually.

"I'm not your -"

"Legally, you are."

"I signed."

"I didn't." he holds up his left hand, soft yellow light from the lanterns glinting off the thick band on his finger. It's solid, heavy; Mark used to say it was a handcuff.

Now, it feels like a tether, holding him precariously to her.

"Don't go to the ring." she snaps, flinging his words back at him with bitter force.

"For better or for worse, in sickness and in health-" he reminds her.

"Don't talk about _vows_ ," she laughs, a hollow bitter sound. "Don't talk about oaths."

"We _both_ broke them, Addison -"

"I know that, do you think I don't know that? Do you think it doesn't hurt me, to -"

"I recall you saying something about _love, honor, and cherish_ but you haven't done much of either-"

"Don't you dare blame me, Derek, you gave up the _love_ part years ago, you ruined the _honor_ in that exam room and _cherish_ , well, I'm not sure if that ever existed, so-"

"Till death do us part."

* * *

The edge of the deck is sharp against the back of her bare thighs, goosebumps rising on her skin along with his tone, sand slipping silky between her toes.

He used to love doing that, sneaking up as she lay sleeping or sunbathing, bury her in sand until she cried uncle. He used to love a lot of things.

Her, for starters.

The tables have turned now, now he's the one dangling rings and reciting vows that feel more strangling than binding, he's the one chasing.

She's the one running.

It's a sick game they play, they keep score in tears and betrayals, there are no rules except that they each take their turns.

 _Till death do us part_ he says to her, he says it as his fingers circle her wrist strong and warm.

He doesn't know, though, how close she came that last night in Seattle, a heartbeat, a blink, a breath away from just ending it _all_. The ultimate escape. Blessed relief.

But in the end she thought it was just so ...weak. Like laying down and accepting defeat. Accepting that he'd won. Defeat is the one thing she'll never take from him. Victory is what she'll no longer give.

So she didn't. Instead she came a thousand miles away, started a new life without ending the old.

He doesn't know that, though. He doesn't know how close he came to being actually free.

Wouldn't that just make him happy? He'd still be the good guy, the blameless victim. Widower sounds so much better than divorcee.

She supposes its sort of sad that she's not sure why she put the pills away, because she wanted to live or because she refused to grant him that freedom.

And now she supposes he sees it in her eyes, hears it in her silence, because his hands move up her wrists to her arms and he's shaking the words out of her like a salt cellar and then there's salt spilling hot and wet on her cheeks as well.

"What did you do?"

His voice is high, panicked, the faintest note of concern.

"Addison!"

Eleven, she counted that night, small and round and white and promising. One to numb each year. Four more she added for the years before that. One more, for luck. Would it have been enough?

"Addie?"

He's pleading now, grip gentled against her stinging skin. Scared, maybe, that she'll do it again. Go through, this time, last time she didn't have the courage.

"Of course I didn't do anything," she hisses, shrugging his hands off of her. "I would never."

* * *

He remembers thinking it was romantic, sweet, that line about _till death do us part_. He imagined having years on end with her, children and grandchildren and joys and sorrows all mixed up _together_.

He remembers her eyes enormous and impossibly blue when he said the words to her standing surrounded by flowers and watchful eyes, the way her trembling mouth flicked into the tiniest of smiles.

She looks somewhat the same now, yellow light slanting over a face whose planes are a little harsher than he remembers, lines sharp enough to cut. But her eyes are dark with an emotion he can't place, storm-tossed sea instead of their usual placid color. Her lips are trembling but not with repressed joy, and the tears spilling onto her cheeks frighten him.

She never cries. Not like this, almost like she doesn't know she's doing it. He can count on the fingers of one hand and still have a few left the number of times she's broken down openly.

And yet here she is, her arms stiff cardboard under his fingers as he shakes her slightly, rattling the truth from her, horrified.

Addison. She's the strength in their marriage, the constant, the voice of reason. He's drawn from the depths of her for years to steady himself; he's never seen someone else so utterly in control. For her to have lost it like this...

She shrugs his hands off, her own coming up automatically to rub at pink circles. She always did mark easy. He never did know his strength.

"I would never," she hisses, leaning away. "Not over you."

And just like that she's dry-eyed again, rising to her feet, moving quickly away from him, towards the water and his heart is in his throat.

She _said_ she wouldn't, but still.

He calls after her, voice drowning in the wind.

"Get away from me," she says calmly when he catches up.

"Come back in the house."

"It's _my_ house, I'll come back when I want to."

"Addison-"

"Damn it, Derek, I came here to get away from _you_ , so for the love of god, leave me alone-you used to be great at that, remember?"

"I'm not leaving you here. Not when you're like this."

"I'm fine." she says tonelessly.

"As fine as I am?"

"Finer," she smirks.

"Addie... I'm sorry."

"Will you _stop_ fucking saying that?" she snarls, legs biting wide strides into the sand that's slowing him down.

"I am, just let me show you how sorry I am-"

She stops dead in her tracks, water lapping surprisingly warm at their ankles. Something brushes against his foot and he tries not to think about the things he can't see.

"You lost the right to do that, and frankly-"she puts a warm hand on his chest as he steps closer. "-I wouldn't care."

"Don't say that," he says. "Not yet."

"I _hate you_ ," she flings at him, venomous. " _Hate_ you. A year, Derek, a year wasted in a city I detest, a year my career was on hold, my whole life was on hold, for nothing. I - _we_ \- could have moved on by now, been in better places but you had to be the good guy, you had to play house, you had to-"

"You practically _begged_ me to take you back, Addison, remember? And I did. You owe me at least that credit- "

She pulls her hand back, shoving wind whipped hair out of her flushed face and he captures it on its way down. "I owe you nothing, Derek Shepherd, I gave you the last decade of my life, my best years, and you ruined my fairytale, _you_ took that chance from me-" she chuckles mirthlessly at what must be confusion in his eyes. "Oh, yes, there's more, apparently I'm not just an adulterous bitch, I'm a barren adulterous bitch, go ahead, tell me karma sucks, because it does, New York was my last chance and I got rid of it so this is payback, go _ahead_ , Derek, rub it in my face."

His blood runs cold, steeling his grip on her hand and almost stopping his heart.

" _What_ did you say?"

* * *

 ** _I'm going to tell y'all a teeny secret. I type my chapters in twenty minutes on my phone before bed, usually with little preplanning. So...excuse the odd typo please?_**

 ** _There will be more talking in the next chapter, which should be up...soon._**

 ** _Sooner, if you review (haha. Sorry.)_**

 ** _Please review, and feel free to leave prompts or requests or ideas!_**


	6. Chapter 6

**_Thanks for all the beautiful comments on the last chapter._**

 ** _You really have no idea how much they mean to me; it's literally why I write another chapter. And another. And another._**

 ** _And here's another one right now._**

 ** _Enjoy!_**

* * *

He thought she couldn't throw anything worse at him than she did when he pushed open their bedroom door that last night in New York.

But if there's one thing he should have learned after eleven years of marriage - it's to never underestimate Addison.

They stand there ankle deep in warm lapping waves, his skin starting to itch uncomfortably from the salt, but his focus is on her, her eyes, wide and bottomless , her wrist curled in his fingers.

Does she mean...what he thinks she means?

He feels like she's knocked the breath out of him, his lungs sucking at salty air as his head spins sickeningly.

She wouldn't.

Unless...

"It wasn't yours," she says, almost apologetic. Cool, clinical, like she's explaining an outcome to a patient. Slightly pitying, in the way she doesn't tug her hand from his grasp.

His fingers are locked rigidly around her wrist, delicate bones vulnerable under his grip. He can feel the butterfly beat of her pulse against his thumb, faster than he used to feel it as he pressed his lips to the base of her throat.

One twist, and he could end the career that was half the reason they drifted apart. It's more than a job, to her. To him. It's a passion, bordering on religious, and taking that away from her would change the very fundamentals of who she is.

The way she's just ruined every memory of the past sixteen years. How many stolen moments, pilfered kisses, hidden stories were there?

If anyone were watching them, it might look like a couple on a moonlit beach walk, maybe playing in the surf. Two people, in love.

They couldn't be more wrong if they tried.

* * *

When he turned up today, when he stayed after she told him to... it sparked a little bit of hope she'd thought was long dead inside her.

She might not have let it show ...but he's a frighteningly large part of her, and without him she's been adrift, lost, searching for comfort she doesn't know how to find in places she's never been.

And maybe, just a little, she was childishly glad that this time around he would be the one doing the chasing and the apologising and the sacrificing.

" _What_ did you say?"

He drops her wrist like he's been scalded, and she twists her fingers almost reflexively through his, clinging. Who knows, this might be the last time.

"Derek..."

And just like that, he's got the upper hand again.

"No. Tell me you didn't just say-" he can't seem to bring himself to say it, shaking his head disgustedly instead, a gesture she's intimately familiar with by now.

They all observed, in med school, except Naomi and they were unusually quiet, after, thoughtful, and when she'd become a provider years later they had a tacit agreement that they wouldn't discuss it.

Well, they broke the marriage; all bets are off anyway.

He's still staring at her, her fingers laced through his so she can't tell who's holding on to who. Maybe they both are.

Maybe they're both trying to get away.

But then he drops his hand, leaving hers stretching lonely into the darkness as he walks away, her silence the only answer he needs.

* * *

He's walking back through the waves as they rush back into the ocean, tugging the sand from underneath his feet and he feels like he might fall over, let them pull him underwater.

Then he wouldn't have to hear her call out to him, that small broken voice he can pretend not to hear.

He can't make out what she's saying until she comes up behind him at the sliding glass doors, as he's wiping his sandy feet carefully on the woven mat like she's always carping about. Habits are hard to break.

She says his name then, a garbled rush of syllables, like it can't wait. He turns around, one hand on the door, expectant. Habits are hard to break.

"I didn't mean to -"

 _Screw my best friend and get pregnant?_

"- tell you."

He blinks in surprise, then recovers. Of course she isn't apologising. She's never sorry.

"I'm sorry you did."

He says it honestly, but it comes out cold and clipped, he can see her eyes flicker in the dim light.

* * *

Of course he's sorry she told him. She's never interested him much; he probably considers it a waste of his time.

He's moving quickly through her living room now, collecting his phone, his jacket, his wallet. Leaving. Again.

He's always leaving and she's always staying and she'd thought she finally had the high horse this time but he's stolen it out from under her again.

Okay, she practically gave it to him, but still.

"Derek, wait."

He's pulling something from his briefcase, flipping it open on the countertop and reaching habitually in the bowl she always keeps there for the pens he used to keep there and coming up empty handed.

"Derek, what are you doing?"

* * *

 _Derek, what are you doing, what are you doing with my clothes?_

Her voice trembled with panic that night, high and pleading. Tonight, she sounds tired. Defeated.

"Letting you go."

Because she's held on too long. She's held in too long and for a long time she was the only one keeping them afloat, and now she's tired and he doesn't quite know how to do it and they're both drowning.

So he's letting her go.

She's made a life here in LA, a sunny happy life that holds no place for him. A life where she has friends who don't know him and a home that doesn't include him and a job he's never imagined her doing.

She's moved on already. She has...Pete. She'll be all right. She's happy.

And maybe he can be too, someday, safe in the knowledge that he hadn't permanently scarred her.

* * *

He digs a pen out of his pocket as she stands there frozen, a rush of relief and something else - a little nostalgia, some guilt, a little regret - thaws through her veins.

Isn't this what she wants?

He uncaps the pen, tilts the paper just a bit like he always does, and she closes her eyes as it scratches out his name.

"I'm sorry." she says as he pushes them towards her; pointless, really, but it makes her feel a little bit better, less of a horrible person about the way she's hurt him tonight.

"Yeah, me too." he says. He might actually be; he certainly looks the part.

"So..."

"Yeah." he flops an arm towards the door. "I should probably-"

"Aren't you going to _say_ anything?" she blurts desperately.

* * *

 _Never change_ he thinks, and to his surprise he finds himself suppressing a smile. She never could just let go, she's like a dog with a bone.

There's so much to say.

He could give in to the frightening rage boiling through him. He could yell.

Or he can accept that he drove her to it, let her go, and put her out of her misery. She deserves it, and it's the least he can do.

"No," he says, as gently as he can. "There's nothing left to say, Addie. We were good together, we had a lot of great years, and I want you to know-"

* * *

His voice is soft, but ragged around the edges and it cuts her deep.

"I want you to know, I'll never regret them."

He's at the door now, looking back at her with eyes as soft and warm as they used to be when they were AddisonandDerek, when everything was perfect, when they weren't two broken people destroying each other.

"Addison," he saying, firm and insistent. "Look at me."

She does, blinking back tears that taste bitter at the back of her throat. She can see two Dereks, but she doesn't even have one.

"I'm leaving now."

He toys with her sleeve, a decade old nervous habit when he's trying to figure out how to tell her something he knows she won't take well. Stalling for time.

Over the years, how much time did she waste?

"Don't do anything...stupid." he says finally, releasing her. "Please."

* * *

The fabric of her shirt is soft between his fingers, warm from her skin and it catches against the roughness of his skin.

She won't be alone tonight, she has the -slightly incapacitated - shrink.

But still. He sees razor blades and pills and scarves when he looks into the vast blackness of her eyes, ringed by the vivid blue that first caught his attention through yellow tinted safety goggles.

If he stays tonight, he'll never leave.

So he takes a step closer, wraps an arm around her and captures her lips one last time, tasting tears and feeling her sink into him, the slightest up-and-to-the-right tilt of her head she's always done that fits her perfectly against him, her warm breath on his chest as she pulls away.

"Goodbye."

* * *

 ** _This is not the end, I repeat, this is not the end._**

 ** _I will be continuing, hopefully soon._**

 ** _Remember, I love Addek like Addison loves shoes._**

 ** _I wouldn't hurt them._**

 ** _Or would I..._**

 ** _Anyway, hit me with them reviews!_**


	7. Chapter 7

**_Bit depressing, I'm warning you._**

* * *

 _"Goodbye."_

Why do people say that? There's nothing, in her experience, that's good about it.

It heralds someone walking away, leaving, going away, the beginning of gnawing anxiety. Will they be back? Will they _want_ to be back?

Except this time she knows he won't be back so the anxiety is replaced by a heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach, dragging her under as she tries to keep afloat.

There's nothing good in goodbye.

 _ **..**_

LA is as vibrant as a city can be, a cacophony of color and sound and scent, and yet she's detached, floating along as rudderless as a cloud.

She casts no shadow, leaves no prints. She wakes up in the morning alone on the left side of the bed, she goes to work in a practice so devoid of excitement she wants to scream just to see if she can startle them from their calm stupor.

They think she doesn't see it, what they're doing. Treating her with kid gloves, like she's fragile enough to shatter at a misplaced word.

She's not fragile. She was hurt and she got back up again; that makes her very freaking strong, not fragile.

Where did she hear that again? It sounds familiar, but she can't quite place it. Doesn't matter.

The point is, she's strong.

Strong enough to take the pity Naomi doles out so graciously. Strong enough to resist the temptation of Pete. Strong enough to pretend she isn't bored to distraction by her new life.

Strong enough to live it anyway.

And it's not like she can't do it, she's always been on her own. She might have fooled herself into thinking she had her parents, or her brother, and then Derek and finally Mark but in the end when it's all said and done - she's alone.

This is Addison, post- McDreamy, post- McSteamy, and she'll be damned if she isn't going to make the best of it.

* * *

In New York, she ceased to exist for him. At first it was a slow vanishing act, fading a little bit each day, until he came home when he wasn't supposed to.

Then it was all at once.

He'd be lying if he said he didn't think about her as he fled to Seattle, even as he bought the land here, as he took Richard's job. He did.

But he never thought she might have felt the same way - he went to sleep at night with a sick feeling in his stomach for weeks on end, imagining her alone in the home they were supposed to be in together. Or worse, not alone with Mark.

But that only lasted until he went to a bar across the street from his workplace - not smart decision to begin with - and he met a girl, and the rest is history.

And when she sashayed back into his life, all red lips and red curls, she assured him she was only here for work. Only she never left, and she seeped back into the cracks of his heart and they were trying.

Until he blew it all to hell, that is.

Anyway, the point is that she said she was here for work, and a week later - a week full of cold glares in elevators and even colder shoulders - she handed him divorce papers.

Of course, she suggested a threesome with his girlfriend first, but then again she wouldn't be Addison if she hadn't.

And there he goes, losing the point again. She really needs to get out of his head.

The point was... that the papers were filed in Seattle. Not in New York.

She'd come here to beg him to take her back. Richard was a convenient cover.

She asked him to take her back, and he did, and for a year she tried to fix their tattered marriage, patching it with lies.

And when he tugs on the threads it all unraveled, spooling into sixteen years worth of history at their feet and now he's tripping over it as he tries to get away.

 _ **..**_

"So you left her." Burke raises his eyebrows coolly. "Or is it the other way around, I'm a bit fuzzy on that."

"Me too." he says, and the look of surprise that flits across Burke's face is so out of character he almost smiles.

"You know, if you do something wrong, you should apologise." Preston says slowly, scanning the board.

"Heart man." he grunts in response.

There's a slight pause as he rocks back on his feet, breathing in. "Addison said that to me once."

Of course she did. She always says the right things. It's just that she never does them.

"She didn't ...do anything," he says, more force of habit than anything else. She's not his to defend anymore, though.

But she didn't do anything, not to him, anyway. What she did in New York didn't involve him at all; it was Addison and Mark and their child that she took the decision to get rid of.

It shouldn't hurt him at all.

* * *

"Why'd you do it?" Naomi asks curiously. Always so reasonable.

"Which it?" she asks. She's not going to approve of either of her its but then again she doesn't approve of much these days.

"Both."

"Well, the first it... " she says, tucking her feet underneath her and staring her friend right in the eye, wanting to see the judgement pass. "I couldn't have, Nae, and he couldn't have. And we would have been terrible parents...it just wasn't the right time."

She can see the exact moment where Naomi swallows when I got pregnant with Maya and dredges up her tact instead. "But you didn't tell him, before, in Seattle, when it mattered - why now?"

"Because if I didn't...he wouldn't leave."

"You told him you aborted your lover's child...to make him leave." Naomi says, looking confused. "Addie, sorry, but you've gone off the deep end."

She certainly feels like she has, she feels numb. Insulated from what's happening around her, cocooned in warm water so that her ears are blocked and her eyes are blurry and no one can hear a word she says and her lungs are on fire from needing to breathe but the air she seeks is nowhere to be found.

"I couldn't make him stay any longer, Nae." she admits. "I ... couldn't look at him, I looked at him and I felt nauseated and then I think what ifor he feels that way when hr looks at me... because I did that to him too. I hurt him exactly like the way he hurt me, and feeling what that felt like - I couldn't make him stay."

"Oh, Addie," she sighs, pulling her head into her lap. "When did we get so screwed up?"

* * *

"Derek."

She's soft, hesitant, eyes hopeful.

It must feel nice, to be able to feel hope. To be able to think that there will be a day not as painful as today, to be able to wait for something more, something better.

He wants - no, he needs - a little of that.

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry," she says.

"Don't be," he replies. "We're not."

They're not. _She_ isn't, at any rate.

She hasn't been in a while. He wonders if she ever was.

"Eleven years," Meredith is saying softly, like he doesn't remember. "It doesn't just go away, Derek."

But it did. His wife made it go away, in a heart shattering soul crushing instant that sent him spinning across the country.

For her, it went away.

So why should he hold on?

* * *

"You okay?"

"Do you think this helps?"

He eyes the glass in her hand a little warily, thinking.

It's okay, they all think she's crazy anyway.

Maybe she is.

"It has...antioxidants?" he says after a while, sounding doubtful.

She tilts the glass, crimson threatening to spill onto her immaculate skirt.

Maybe she should let go. Let it fall, let it stain, leave a mark that tells everyone she isn't as perfect as they all think she is.

They look at her and expect miracles. They look at her and expect advice. They expect her to have it together - and why shouldn't she, she's never really lacked for anythinanything - and she's afraid that she'll slip and they'll see the real Addison and then they'll pity her too.

They'll pity her, that sad sick look in their eyes when they see her. The way Naomi looks at her, _poor Addie_ , like she deserves the judgement she shoves down her throat, sweetened with sympathy.

"Drinking in the office, never a good sign." he teases halfheartedly. She wonders how long it will take him to flee; he might practice alternative medicine but she's pretty sure he has an actual patient or two.

"Leave me alone."

"You don't have to be alone," he gestures at the empty, darkened practice. "I'm here."

"No, you don't get it," she explains. How doesn't he, the stupid quack? It's so painfully, shamefully obvious.

"I'm always alone."

He takes the glass from her hand, setting it down on her book.

"You don't _have_ to be."

* * *

Silence can be so loud.

He never realised that before.

It's deafening, filling his ears, ringing hollow until he wants to scream into the empty air just to fill it up a bit.

He could, actually, and no one would have to know. No one would hear; out here, he's truly alone.

No one knows him.

They know Derek Shepherd, neurosurgeon, McDreamy, Meredith's ex - boyfriend.

They don't know what lies beneath the carefully perfect exterior. They don't know about the dead father and the junkie sister and the years and years and _years_ of memories that don't include any of them.

Well, except for the man knocking insistently on his door now.

He knows him a little too well.

* * *

She's been shuffling along for weeks now, going through the motions of the life she thought would make her feel better.

Now, so close she can feel the heat radiating from his skin, she's finally feeling a faint flicker of... something, apprehension, doubt, recklessness, maybe all three.

"I want more," she breathes, drawing back. He should be warned.

And she's still married.

"I want you," he says back, eyes dark, and she falls into them, drifting closer.

She's still married.

"What?" he snaps when she pulls away, and the irritation in his tone is enough to make up her mind.

"I-"

"It's over, Addison." he says, almost gentle, fingers soothing on her thigh. "It's over and you don't have to hold back anymore. Live a little."

"Not like this." she replies, and it feels good to walk away with her dignity intact. It's a feeling she hasn't had much lately.

* * *

"I thought you were better," he says, looking far too comfortable on the lumpy little couch.

So did he, to be honest.

"I thought you had more fight," Richard muses, peering at him. "But you gave up."

" _She_ gave up." he says wearily. A night's sleep will help him forget better than rehashing the glory days of the Shepherd marriage with Richard.

"She had reason, didn't she? I've been where you are. Exactly where you are- I worked all the hours I could, and my marriage took a beating, but Adele stuck with me."

"Adele never slept with your best friend."

"No, but I do know a thing or two about affairs with women named Grey."

It should have jolted him, this sudden confession -never, in a million years would he have imagined this- but he's numbed with scotch and exhaustion and it bounces clumsily off him.

"You love Meredith," he's explaining. "You love her, she's your _different_. She looks at you all impressed and she doesn't challenge you and she doesn't call you on your bullshit. And Addison does, and you need a fresh start. So you love Meredith."

He holds up a hand to stop him when he opens his mouth.

"But you're _in_ love with Addison. And son, let me tell you - that's never going away."

* * *

 _ **Bit circular, I'm sorry, but I promise more progress in the next chapter.**_

 _ **Until then...you know what to do!**_


	8. Chapter 8

**_.._**

* * *

Surgery is easy.

Well, no, it's not, but right now, compared to the garbage fire that is the rest of his life...

Surgery is easy.

Cut, suture, close, each step carefully orchestrated and precisely performed, you know exactly what you want and how to get get there.

Which is far more than he can say for himself right now, cruising down an unfamiliar street, sun-blind and sweltering.

When she said she needed a change - well, he didn't think she'd move to the tropics and turn into a snooty private practice doctor, but she did, so maybe it's not too great a departure from character to have _him_ swallowing his pride for once.

And he repeats this to himself as he wanders onto an elevator - are elevators everywhere the same, or is Seattle Grace just weird? - and steps off into a room that looks...

Swiss Family Robinson comes to mind. But maybe he'll keep that to himself for now.

* * *

Naomi was right, when she asked her to stay on at Oceanside. It's refreshing, mostly no one knows her, she knows no one and unless she chooses to tell them, they never have to know her story.

Not that she's about to admit it to her anytime soon.

She's already unbearably condescending, _poor Addie_ , like she didn't have a significant hand in destroying her marriage.

She dealt the first blow, and left Derek to finish it off; maybe somewhere in the back of her mind she'd expected him not to, but he stopped being able to read her mind a long time ago, so here she is.

Done with her one surgery for the day. With Pete.

Chatting about exactly nothing at ten am.

God, she's bored.

"You know," he's saying, leaning closer over her desk. She didn't say he could sit on her desk, but he is anyway. "We should see-"

"Addison?"

It's Dell in the doorway, smirking at the sight of them. She wonders how secure the Dell-vault really is.

"Someone here to see you."

* * *

He'll deny it with all he has, but...he's missed her.

He's known her for almost half his life now, there's nothing that can substitute years and years of knowing another person, their every quirk and mannerism and gesture, the intimacy of being able to read someone with just a look, it's something he's craved since the anonymity of Seattle lost its charm.

He's missed her.

So when he sees her leaning over her desk - _Montgomery_ it says on her door- towards another man, it hurts.

It hurts like...like it must have hurt her, in that exam room.

Like it hurt him in their bedroom back in Manhattan.

They're a vicious circle, and this time he's determined to break it.

* * *

Okay, they need a new receptionist. A real one, instead of tanned surfer-boy eye candy.

How could he just let him in?

"Hello," he says, his voice smoothly pleasant.

But she knows that look, that hard glitter of determination in his eyes.

"I'm Derek Shepherd. And you-" he extends a hand to Pete, but he's looking right at her, the _bastard._

"You must be the man who's been screwing my wife."

* * *

"What are you doing here?"

Her voice is as icy as her eyes, leaving no room for argument.

"Something one of us should have done a long time ago." he replies as neutrally as he can when his pulse is still pounding in his ears, slowly receding.

Is it too late?

"No right," she says quietly, standing just this side of too close, and he can see each individual fleck of blue and teal and indigo in her eyes, red and gold and auburn in her hair. "You had _no right_ to do that."

"You're my wife." he reminds her. "I'd say it was my duty, not my right."

She holds up a bare hand, lips pressed tightly together. "We signed, remember? I'm not your wife - I'm not your anybody."

Oh, but she is. She's his everybody. She's everywhere. In his head, in his heart, in his trailer, in his conscience.

Yes, his conscience sounds like his wife. He can't help it.

"It doesn't work unless you actually give the papers to the lawyer, _honey_ ," he smirks, watching horror unfold on her face.

"Wh - you didn't?"

"I didn't think it was time." he says easily; it's so much easier when he can watch her squirm, knowing she's every bit as uncomfortable as he is.

"So you showed up here instead?"

"Just in time , it looks like."

"You- I didn't. Pete and I... we didn't."

"Can you really blame me for jumping to that conclusion?"

Her cheeks flush red, and she steps closer, for a minute he thinks she might actually - but no, she breathes deeply, smoothing away imaginary wrinkles.

"No, I don't, so why don't you just _leave_ ?"

* * *

Her voice breaks embarrassingly on the last word, tugging it higher, and she sees something flicker in his eyes, his hand twitching towards her but then he doesn't and she supposes it's a trick of the light.

"Please."

After all her resolutions and planning and moving on...she's right back where she started.

Begging him.

Only this time she's not begging for his forgiveness or for his love or for anything he's refused her for so long, she's begging, simply, to be left alone.

"I'm not going anywhere," he informs her, perching on the edge of her desk where minutes ago, she could see the future.

"And neither are you," he adds as she tenses her legs underneath the desk, preparing to stalk out of her office. "We've wasted enough time already."

* * *

Okay, so maybe he was a little harsher than he intended to be.

But he'd never planned to catch with that... Pete guy in her face, either. And it irks more than he cares to admit.

She's still his wife.

"What, Derek?" She's slammed one manicured hand on the desk and he misses the clunk of metal that usually accompanies it.

"What do you want? The brownstone? The Hamptons? Take everything, for God's sake, all I want you to leave me is _alone_."

And all he wants is her.

"I don't want the damn houses." he says evenly. "Will you just for once in your life shut up and listen to me?"

She does, glowering, but she's not bolting. For now.

"Okay, so-" he swallows, suddenly a lot more nervous than he pictured himself being. "I was thinking-"

She snorts, and he feels his head beginning to throb.

"Addison."

"I'm _listening_ , aren't I?"

Technicalities.

"Anyway, I was thinking, we've both made mistakes. You did and then I did and now...now you're making another one."

"Excuse me?" she smiles coldly. " _I'm_ making another mistake?"

"This," he waves a hand at the sunny empty office. "This, it's nice. But Addie, it isn't you. I know you, even if you hate that I do."

* * *

Still. After all this time, after everything that's happened this last year, he _still_ thinks their marriage fell apart when she slept with Mark.

It did. But it wasn't like they were perfect, before.

They were drifting apart, going nowhere fast, and what she'd done had only hastened the inevitable.

But he will never admit it, th toll his perpetual absence took on them.

It's lonely when you're the only one in a marriage, and theirs seemed to alternate between just her or all three of them.

One is lonely, three's a crowd. And now there's no marriage anymore, so it doesn't matter.

"Well, maybe I've changed." she tells him quietly, suddenly very aware of the fact that they are having this ridiculous argument in her office. "Maybe I've changed, and you don't know me anymore."

"I'd know you anywhere."

* * *

God, that was sappy. But it's true, he would know her anywhere.

Even in Seattle, when she lost her fire and became the docile mess he loved to hate, even in LA where she's spitting mad and miserable, she's the same.

And he knows exactly how to push her buttons.

"What do you _want._ " she asks finally, when she realises that this time he's not walking away.

"Another chance."

"At what?" she demands, hands flailing. There was a time would have caught them, kissed them, calmed her down.

Now, he lets her steam, watching in amusement as she paces restlessly.

"At being miserable? At feeling suck every time you look at me? Another chance to show me how much you hate me? Derek-" she looks at him, her eyes narrowed. "Is this some sort of sick revenge? Waste another whole year, so you can be the good guy who gave his cheating wife _another chance_ ?"

"I cheated too," he reminds her. It feels good to be on equal footing for once.

They match now; mistake for mistake, hurt for hurt, wound for wound.

"I know," she rolls her eyes. "I had front row seats, remember?"

Definitely. It's hard to forget what someone looks like when they realise they've been living a lie.

Because that's what Seattle was - a lie.

A lie he told himself, told her, told everyone. A lie he told to make himself believe that he was the man he wanted to be, the forgiving long-suffering husband.

A lie that's long since been exposed.

"Sorry," he says softly.

He is. He never meant to end it like that. In fact, he's not sure he meant to end it at all. He'd probably have let it drag on for years.

"But I never would have gone to Seattle-" he begins.

"If I hadn't slept with Mark." she exhales. "I've heard this before."

"But you never would have slept with Mark..." he continues as if she hasn't spoken at all. "If I hadn't stopped noticing you."

She stops her relentless clicking over the floor, staring openmouthed at him.

"Your office is very nice, Addie, but still, you might catch a fly or two."

"You-" she stutters; he's pleased to see that he can still catch her off guard when he tries.

"I was ... absent." he says carefully. "In New York, I was absent. You deserved better. You _do_ deserve better."

"So this is you...noticing?"

She still looks fairly shaken, sinking into the plush couch cushions, legs perfectly crossed. How he ever stopped noticing her, he has no idea.

"Yes."

"Why now?"

"I'm a bit slow," he replies, grinning.

"Fair enough."

"And in return, _you_ have to trust me to give us another chance."

"Wait wait wait Derek, I never said I'd-"

"Why, you're afraid of hurting Pete's feelings?" he asks caustically.

She flushes dully as she scrounges for a retort and comes up empty handed.

"Right. So, I will notice you. And you will ... not screw other people." he lays it out.

"You...get _out_." she hisses, finding her tongue. "I _never_ want to see you again, you-"

He drowns her colorful expletive in a raucous laugh- he has her exactly where he wants her.

"Oh, but Addie, you forget. I have the divorce papers - _signed_ \- and when exactly the lawyer gets them is up to me. And even if I give them up, it takes ninety days to get a hearing," he's shaking with mirth now, watching the horror of realisation creeping into her eyes. "So, Mrs. Shepherd, you're stuck with me. For at least three months."

That's all he needs.

Three months.

* * *

' **_I_** ** _won't be posting this week_** ' **_she says. 'I'm busy.' she says._**

 ** _I got dress coded today so I had lots and looots of free time, so this happened._**

 ** _And feel free to hate Derek here, I hate him a little bit too in this chapter. Not that Addison's innocent._**

 ** _Anyway, pretty please with a cherry on top can I have a review?_**


	9. Chapter 9

_**It's Sunday, so here's an update.**_

 _ **As always, thanks to all my regular reviewers; you guys are the BEST!**_

* * *

"You can't stay here."

She peeks at him through the tiny gap in the door he's holding open with his foot; all he can see is one glaring eye and tousled hair.

"I don't want to," he counters, which makes no sense because he's standing on her doorstep holding a suitcase.

But he was staying at Sam's, but it's his weekend with Maya and there's no way he's sleeping on Sam's slippery leather couch, and since his...discussion with his...wife went well earlier that day, he's on her doorstep holding a suitcase.

Well, it didn't go _well_ , but it didn't go badly, either.

Too badly.

He explains the situation to her, half expecting to have the door slammed in his face, but she pulls it all the way open, smirking.

"You can stay - like I said before, _I_ don't let people wander around strange cities when I could let them stay."

He winces as he sets the suitcase at the foot of a narrow staircase. "You want to set up a scoreboard in the kitchen, Addie?"

She gives the suggestion serious thought for a moment, then shakes her head, making her newly short hair swirl around her face. He's not quite sure he approves of the new style, but he can't deny it looks good.

She walks up the stairs ahead of him, ushering him into the pale blue bedroom they carried the shrink - Violet? - to the last time he was here.

The last time he was here...

Those wounds are still fresh, still smarting. But they'll heal in time.

He turns to look at her, standing unsure just behind him, and realises she's remembering, too.

"We're trying." he reminds her.

"Should we be?"

* * *

He ignored her. He threw her out of her own home in the rain once. He let her think he loved her, trapped her in a city where everything from the weather to her colleagues were against her. He slept with another woman while she waited for him to come back to her. He signed the divorce papers.

And now here he is in her guest room.

Telling her _we're trying_.

She has no idea if they should even _be_ trying; after all the hurt and all the pain and all the grief and the things they've done to each other...is there any coming back from that?

He's still looking at her, scrutinising. "It wasn't always like this."

That's true. It wasn't. They were so young, so in love. There was a time when she was living in an actual fairytale, complete with a prince and white horse.

And then the sweetness curdled on her tongue, leaving her with...this. Alone in a new city at thirty eight, no husband. No children.

But it wasn't always like this, and the fact that he remembers those early years of their marriage makes her feel a tiny spark of hope, which is more emotion than she's felt in... a long time.

Since that day in Naomi's office.

"It wasn't." she agrees, and her voice is shakier than she'd like it to be. She can't be weak, she can't let him see where it hurts the most. Not until she's sure he won't use it against her.

But he needs to know. If they're going to try, if they're giving this a real shot, he deserves to know.

"Derek," she says; he's got his back to her, emptying his clothes into the dresses like she's drilled into him years ago.

A year - hell, a few months ago, he wouldn't have turned around at the sound of her voice. Now, he stops what he's doing and turns around.

"Yeah?"

"I need to -" she swallows nervously. "I need to tell you something. You've probably guessed already, but... I need to tell you. Because we're trying."

* * *

Of course she insists that he finish unpacking first, and disappears somewhere in her little dollhouse, leaving him to ponder her cryptic words.

 _I need to tell you something._

Well, if there's something he already knows, it's that Addison has the greatest capacity for internalising things of anyone he's ever met; the only things she'll share are either happy things or things that don't hurt.

The big things, the painful, life-altering secrets...those she'll squirrel away and share them in tidbits.

And going by the look on her face just before she left, that frighteningly blank mask, this is big.

She's outside on her patio, the way she was the last time, he can see two glasses and a bottle glinting next to her. It's dark outside, salty and cool, and the waves crashing against the beach are surprisingly soothing.

He takes the recliner next to her; she doesn't turn, looking out over the water.

"You were saying?"

She pulls the ends of her blanket around her shoulders and for a moment she looks very small, disappearing into the soft knit wool. He could reach out to her, let her lean into him like she hasn't in so long.

But then she takes a deep breath, sitting up, the blanket slithering off her back like the cool air is strengthening her.

"You can't see the moon here," she mutters, and he raises an eyebrow but doesn't say anything. She'll get to it in her own way, in her own time. She always does.

"I mean, you always picture it that way, that you can see the moon at night, at least on the beach, but not here, there's...you can't see it."

He hums in agreement, and they're silent.

"Remember that one place?" she says after a while, when the bottle is half empty and he's about to ask.

"With the bed?"

"No, not that place. The other place, with the boat..." she trails off.

He does. They sat much like they are tonight, except they shared a recliner and she curled into him and they had all the time in the world.

It was dark and quiet, they were almost alone out on the water, no pagers, no distractions.

"You remember that?" she asks softly.

"Yeah." he replies shortly; it's not something he wants to talk about now. They have enough to deal with, no point dredging up new worries.

No point complicating things.

It was all right to talk about this back then, because back then, nothing was complicated. Everything was perfect.

And now...

* * *

She can see the subtle stiffening of his shoulders at the mention of that night, and wonders if she's going too fast for him. He said they were trying, but does that involve this?

It should. He should know, what he's getting into, that even if this works, there's no way she'll ever be able to -

"You told me you were ready." he says quietly. "And then-"

He was so happy. Even before she told him, he was so happy; they were celebrating the end of her second _-hopefully last_ he said - fellowship.

They'd been putting it off for years, intern year and then residency. Fellowships, plural for her. He hadn't brought it up in a while but she knew it mattered to him.

And when she said it - _I'm ready_ , that's all she said - he didn't need to be told what she was talking about, and when he finally drew back, his eyes were brighter than the stars she could see behind his head.

She can't see any tonight but that's stupid, superstition, premonition, whatever. It shouldn't matter.

"And then," she breathes out, reluctantly. Why does he have to bring up the worst part of every memory?

Or is it just that they don't _have_ memories that aren't tainted one way or another?

And then, a few months later, she was pregnant.

* * *

 _And then_ she sighs, and he feels guilty for bringing it up.

They haven't spoken about it in years. Why now?

 _She's_ the one who brought up that night on the boat, that night he thought everything was finally changing.

He thought he finally had his wife back after years of late night calls and never ending emergencies. He thought they were going to be a family - and what a perfect family they would have been - he thought that the perfection of that moment would last forever.

But as it turned out, that night was the last high before a roiling series of lows and dips and falls that they never really recovered from.

No, not that night, the last high was ... a month, maybe two later.

She said she had it all planned out, a cheesy announcement, but he wouldn't have preferred it any other way than being pounced upon with a positive test the minute he walked through the front door.

God, they were so _young_.

So naive.

And then a week later, they were neither of those things.

"Addison," he says; his voice is rough but not harsh. "It wasn't your fault, there wasn't anything you could have-"

"I _know_." she snaps tersely and he falls silent.

How many times did they have this discussion?

 _It wasn't your fault_ he used to say before everything that went wrong became her fault.

 _I know_ she used to snap, before she screwed everything up.

" _That_ time wasn't your fault." he clarifies.

* * *

But the second time, that second time Derek should have never known about, that second time that was her mistake and Mark's mistake...that was definitely her fault.

No one _made_ her do it. In fact, Mark begged her. Sat on the other side of a locked bathroom door - his loft, never their brownbrownstone, she wanted it to end where it had begun - and begged her.

He made promises, that he would change, be a better man, and for a minute there when the cramps were tearing her in half and scrambling her brain she almost believed him but it was too late anyway and then _he_ wouldn't look at her either.

He wanted it. But she did it anyway.

It was her fault.

But the first time, it wasn't her fault, it was all perfect, teddy bears and booties and pale yellow wallpaper and arguments over names until it wasn't anymore and he threw himself into work and she followed his lead and then everything spiraled out of control.

Warmth tingles from the top of her head to her toes when she remembers the way he used to look at her back then, like there was nothing else that mattered.

It fades when she sees the way he's looking at her now, something like contempt in his eyes.

"I know," she whispers again miserably. "I'm sorry."

"Shouldn't you be saying that to Mark?" he asks; not to hurt her, she can see genuine curiosity in his eyes.

Of course. Mark and Derek were a thing long before Derek and Addison.

"I did." she says. It's true. She apologised.

 _But that was **my** baby, Addison!_

And then he said it didn't really matter anyway, it never would have worked out, that it was probably for the best.

But Derek doesn't need to know that.

"We're trying," she says lamely.

"I _know_ ," he says simply. "It was my idea."

"Stop bragging-" she drags in a breath. This isn't the time to bicker about this.

It _was_ his idea, his idea that he came up with when he didn't know the secret weighing heavy on her right now.

"I'm going to tell you now," she warns, and he snorts.

"You've been staring at me for a half hour, Addison, just say it already."

Oh. So he still knows that about her.

"I - I can't have kids."

"I know." he says, looking confused. "You told me, that night, remember? When you told me about-"

He breaks off awkwardly, his fingers stretching towards hers but not quite close enough.

"When I told you what I did in New York." she supplies dully. "But - I mean, like _ever._ I can't ever have kids."

"There are ways.."

"I'm the OB, Derek, stay in your lane. And there aren't ways, not for me, I'm an eggless wonder-"

* * *

He can't help but laugh a little at that; she always was hilarious when she rambled.

She looks hurt though, and he finally bridges the gap between them, curling her chilly fingers into his.

"You're still cold blooded," he observes. "Is that why you moved here?"

"I'm _not_." she insists, her voice thick like it always gets when she's pushing back tears. She never cries.

She used to cry, in front of him, _it's okay if it's you_ she used to say, and a surge of protectiveness used to run through him at the broken sound of her voice.

But this isn't a bedroom and apparently he's not okay anymore.

When she screamed those words at him that night, warm water lapping at his ankles, cold words in his ears, he thought she was talking about the baby they lost.

The baby _she_ lost, that tragedy he had no part in creating.

He thought there would be another chance, if not together, then at least for her.

"It's okay," he says softly, convincing her, convincing himself. "It's okay."

"It's not." she says quietly. "You always wanted kids, and you should know-"

Her eyes are very bright, tears she won't let fall making them shimmer. "That even if it works out, I can't have kids."

"What do you mean, even if it works out?" he teases lightly; his usual defence mechanism. "Of course it'll work out. We're Derek and Addison, and I'm okay with just the two of us."

She stares at him a long moment. "Addison and Derek."

"Whatever."

"You're okay now..." she asks, fingers weaving through his. "But will you always be okay? You won't resent me, or something?"

He sighs, and in the seconds pause between his words he sees her face fall so he slides over just the tiniest bit, tugging at her hand and then she's beside him, soft and warm, not too close but better than before, and after a while she lets her head drop onto his shoulder like she's tired of fighting him.

"I've always wanted kids, Addie, but... I wanted them with you." he says honestly, and she melts into his side a little.

Maybe she's done fighting him.

* * *

 _ **Reviews, please?**_


	10. Chapter 10

**_Hey, I'm back. More stressbuster writing. Hope you like it._**

 ** _And to all my faithful reviewers; I love you guys like Addie loves shoes._**

* * *

Trapped. That's how he feels, here in this tiny house so close to the ocean he can taste it. It's how he feels every time she looks at him, those bottomless eyes fastening on his back.

She's different here. Again. The woman he fell in love with, the woman he married - headstrong and independent and witty, is gone. She wasn't that woman in New York, not for a while. In Seattle, he searched for her, but all he found was the docile Addison who trailed him through corridors, begging, pleading. She's the same in Los Angeles, carefully controlled, yet he can tell she's a breath away from tears.

When she left Seattle that night, he felt the first spark of any emotion - any at all - towards her in so long he was surprised he still could. That night, with Meredith, he couldn't stop himself from doing g what they did. But he could have stopped Addison, one word from him, that's all it would have taken.

She would have stayed. He knows it.

But he didn't say anything and she disappeared and then he came here and he said he wanted to try and she let him.

Of course, there have been things that changed her, that turned her into what she is today. The loss of their baby. The loss of _him,_ when he retreated into a shell. Mark's baby, although he doesn't want to think about it. What he did to her in Seattle.

But he never counted on her not being the same woman.

"I can feel you staring at me." he sighs, setting the spoon carefully on a saucer. This is what he does now. The first day, he discovered her refrigerator was empty, save for an impressive number of bottles, although she had already amassed an equally impressive takeout menu collection. So he went shopping. Which led to cooking dinner, which he has done every night this week.

He cooks and he waits for her to come home, which she does looking wary and exhausted, and then they split a bottle of wine and he watches her push her food around her plate until they go to bed and he lies awake listening to her turn pages and later herself in bed in the room next to him. This is all he does and he is sure he's about to have a psychotic break.

"I'm not staring." she says immediately, vanishing behind the rim of her glass. Her eyes are still pinned to his back. He can feel it; of course he can feel it, he's been pinned by those eyes for years. He used to be able to gauge her mood by the color of those eyes, darker when she was upset, sparkling clear and bright when she was happy. That's his favorite color in the world, that light crystalline blue-green, like sunlight on the sea.

Now, he feels like he's drowning in them.

"You know." he says, carefully reining in his voice. The last thing he feels like is starting an argument. Although, to be honest, that might just be what they need. A raging fire to burn away the dead remnants and bitter memories of what they've done to each other. "If you have something to say, you could just say it."

* * *

She pretends to sip from her glass, the sweet heady scent of the wine tempting her, but her head is already throbbing and she needs to give herself a break. She wishes _he_ would give her a break.

They eat mostly in silence, trading a few words. She compliments his cooking, he nods stiffly. He asks about work, she says it's all right.

It's been a week since he's cut, and he's getting antsy. She can see it, the tapping foot, the short temper. They're both reckless, brewing, and she can sense a storm in the offing.

Good. For them, silence was the true death knell of their relationship. They've always argued, bickered, fought, over the smallest of things. It meant that they cared enough to waste the time and energy it took to yell.

When the yelling stopped - that's when she knew they were done.

"I was thinking," he says, carefully refilling her glass. She wasn't going to drink but then she realised she has hours to kill before bed, and needed a little courage. "About talking to Charlotte. About the job she offered me."

Her mouth suddenly dries, and she takes another sip. Charlotte has had a gleam in her eye since Derek arrived, always talking about how she has a vacancy, how good St. Ambrose is, how he could establish his own department here.

"She's talking about a minimum three year commitment." she says neutrally. Three months, that's what he asked her for. That's all.

"I'm thinking about it." he says coolly, clearing their plates. "Do you think shouldn't be?"

"What I think," she says recklessly, wine loosening her tongue and clouding her head. "Is that you're going too fast."

"What do you mean." he snaps, dishes crashing into the sink; she flinches at the noise and he looks perversely pleased. "I can't sit around the house forever."

"I know."

"You asked me to stay." he says, his voice dangerously low.

"I _know_." she says back, and her voice is the one rising. She's the one who initiated this now. She sees it register in his eyes; wherever this goes tonight, she will have started it.

"You agreed to try." he's reminding her. "You said you wanted to."

"I do, Derek, I do, but-"

"But _what_ , Addison? Having second thoughts? Regretting it? Because I can be on the nextnext plane out of here if that's what-"

"I never said that." she replies, eyes blurring. She can't take watching him walk away yet again. "I want to try."

"So try." he says, disgusted. "You're barely speaking to me. You're gone in the morning and you're late every night, you never answer when I call you and you look like I'm holding you hostage."

"You're - I needed some space." she bursts out, suddenly uninhibited. The words pour acidic from her mouth, and she feels lighter to be saying them. "The way you needed space, the way you took off to Seattle - like that. I needed to just breathe for a minute after I walked in on you -" she takes a steadying breath, clutching the back of the couch. "And then you're _here_ , and you're everywhere, and you're always saying things, and I'm sorry, but it feels like you're trapping me."

" _Trapping_ you?" he laughs, incredulous. "Addison. You're the one who came after me in Seattle. You're hardly in a place to-"

"That was different!"

"How the hell was that different?" he yells, his face darkening. "What Meredith and I had was the same-"

"No," she says desperately, talking fast now to cut off his words. She can feel the tears streaming shameful and hot down her face, but she doesn't bother to wipe them away. "It wasn't. In New York, before I slept with Mark, you ... you never even looked at me, Derek, I never saw you anymore, and by that point I was just scratching an itch. You and Grey? You told me we were going to be all right, Derek, you said you were trying, and we - " she breaks off, brushing her hand roughly over her eyes.

* * *

She's gripping the back of the couch hard enough to whiten her knuckles, tears running in sooty streaks down her face. She looks undone, like he's finally broken through to her, crushed the impenetrable defences she puts up.

"You _danced_ with me." she whispers, her voice breathy and broken. "At the prom, you danced with _me_ and then you went upstairs and you -" she trails off, apparently unable to say it. "It _was_ different."

He remembers the way she looked that night, crystal eyes wide in horror, one pale hand on the door, rings flashing in the light. She wore only those rings, her hair pulled back the way he liked it. He could see more of her face that way, he said once, and she wore it like that more often. The dress was cut low, and when he held her, his fingers splayed across bare warm skin.

She didn't quite close the door after she left, he remembers. She left it slightly ajar, like she was too stunned to push it all the way. In New York, he slammed shut, pressed it closed with his hands while she sobbed. He never gave her a chance.

And here he is, asking for one. Demanding one.

She's shaking silently, pushing her short hair out of her face. It's too short, falling back into her eyes, and she doesn't see him cross the room, stiffening as he pulls her to him.

"I'm sorry." he says gently. "Addie, I'm sorry, all I wanted to say was -"

 _Give me a chance._

It's what he's always left unsaid but what he's always thought. In med school, when he asked her out. He was, in that one heart-stopping second before she broke into a dazzling grin, sure that she would turn him down.

When he knelt before her four years later, dizzy with apprehension, heart thundering in his ears, a ring in his hand, watching her go from shocked to ecstatic to teary before she pulled him up to her, kissed him like it was the first time. _Yes_ , she breathed against his mouth. She's always given him chances.

All he wants is for her to give him one last chance.

"I can't." she rasps, her voice roughening the way it does when she cries. She's still in the dress she wore to work, slippery summery silk against his body, surprisingly pliant in his arms. "I can't keep doing this."

She can't keep doing this, waiting breathless for a sign, something, anything, that he loves her, snatching at whatever he offers and begging, pleading, whining to be noticed. She can't. She won't.

She knows how it will play out; hell say he's sorry and she'll say okay and then they'll be happy for year? maybe two, and he'll get that look in his eyes, again, imagining the rosy futfuture she can never give him. There will never be little feet running through their home, no carefree giggles and warm kisses. He will want the one thing she has been denied, and he will resent her.

He will stop noticing her, and for a while, she will try. Her heels get higher and her skirts a little inappropriate, she changes her hair and tries to tone down her irritation. He'll find someone else. Young, naive, wide-eyed and overawed. She'll find a way to make herself feel better. He will find out, and then it will be _let me show you how sorry I am_ all over again.

She's always the one apologising.

"Addie, please." he's saying softly, stroking her damp hair from her heated cheeks. "I'm sorry. I hurt you, you hurt me, we're both sorry."

They're so _sorry_ , they're fit only for each other. No one else can handle their history, their baggage. Mark said it to them once - _you deserve each other._

She wasn't sure at the time if he meant it to be a compliment or an insult, and she still isn't, but it's true.

No one else deserves to be burdened by the heartbreakingly small grave they left behind, no one else should have to live with their mistakes.

"I'm sorry." he whispers again, and again, and again, almost unconsciously, rocking her gently against him. He's warn and so familiar, his arms draping comfortingly around her, his chin resting atop her head. They fit so well, drawing comfort, giving support.

They stood together like this, she remembers, bathed in the fluorescence of the incubator, swaying in their grief.

That won't happen again. Of that she's sure. That particular tragedy will not repeat itself.

* * *

He feels her give in to him, more of her weight in his arms as she relaxes and he welcomes the feel of it, drawing her closer until he feels her ribs expand against his, the frenzied flutter of her heart. They stood like this years ago, he remembers, but she didn't cry then. He did.

He lets her cry now, her breath hitching, fingers digging into his shoulders. She presses closer, muttering apologies, brushing the dampness from his shirt as she pulls away.

"Addie-"

"Let's stop." she whispers.

She must read the question in his eyes, because she speaks before he can.

Let's just stop hurting each other."

He realises he's never really forgotten this. That he never really will, the way her arms rise to twine around his neck, the way she goes right and he goes left. The way it feels to run a hand down her side, to her back, pull her closer. The way she curves into him, seeking warmth, her mouth soft and sweet and insistent, her hands that know him so well doing things he can't quite name.

He hasn't forgotten how to love her. He can't.

"Derek," she breathes, ragged.

He murmurs her name back to her, his voice muffled in the silken skin of her neck.

" _Derek_."

He raises his head, his pulse pounding, eyes hazy. There's a ringing sound above their heads, and she darts out a hand to scoop her phone from the table above their heads. She puts it to her ear as he rests his elbows on the rug, pressing light kisses over her shoulder, enjoying the way she moves underneath him.

"I'll be right there."

* * *

 ** _Please please please please please please please review. You have no idea how much it means to me._**


	11. Chapter 11

**_This is slightly lighter than the other chapters. An angst-break, if you will._**

 ** _Enjoy!_**

* * *

"What is this again?" he hisses as she parks on a darkened, quiet street corner. It's cool outside, a faint scent of damp leaves ane freshly watered grass in the air. The houses are small and neat, little rows of identical boxes set behind pretty picket fences. A dig barks somewhere, loud and frantic; a man yells something and it falls silent, whimpering a little.

"Shh," she replies, sliding into the darkness. He can't see any of her except a bright glint of red hair, stirring familiar scents into the air as she moves. "We have to be quiet."

A car races past, the whizzing of tires on asphalt, the throb of bass fading away. Close to the freeway, then.

She looks around almost nervously, making sure no one is watching, double checking what looks like an address on her phone.

"Addie," he whispers, horrified. "Are you.."

"What?" she snaps irritably. "I'm not selling drugs, or whatever, just...shut up, will you?"

" _You_ shut up." he snaps back, rubbing his arm where she hit him.

"Safe Surrender."

"Safe Surrender?" he repeats, squinting at her in the dark, noting how out of place she looks hiding behind a green plastic bin in her dress and heels, a hastily thrown in coat pulled tight around her. Her hair is slightly tousled from earlier, invoking memories that make him wish her phone hadn't interrupted them.

"For babies," she explains in a sibilant hiss, shifting her weight. Count on his wife to wear completely inappropriate shoes for a midnight...spy mission?

"It's a system for mothers who can't care for their babies." she continues, moving quietly towards a mostly-dark house with blue gingham drapes drawn against the night, slipping in through a side gate that's been left open. "They can call a number-" she gestures to the cheap cell in her hand. "And we pick up the child. No questions asked."

"Alone?" he demands. "You go sneaking around people's houses in the dark _alone_ ?"

"Keep it down." she urges. "Of course not, we work in pairs. Mine's Pete, but I didn't call him tonight because-"

"Because you had me." he says, and she looks at him for a long moment, a smile working the corner of her mouth.

"Because I had you." she confirms. "The mother's name is Darcy, she's sixteen, and she says her mom is in the house-" she looks up suspiciously at the darkened windows. "And she can't talk, she just wants us to take the baby."

"She had the baby here?" he asks, worried.

"Looks like -"

The back door opens slowly, a small pale face appearing in the gap. She's small for sixteen, dark hair damp with sweat hanging in a limp curtain around her pinched face. She grips the doorframe for support with one hand, the other arm secured clumsily around a tiny yellow bundle.

"Darcy." Addison breathes, stepping closer to the gap in the door. "Are you all right, do you-"

"I can't talk." the girl whispers, her eyes huge and dark in the dim light. "My mom's upstairs, asleep, I just need to you to take my baby-"

"I'm Dr. Montgomery," Addison says soothingly, reaching for the frightened girl; she sways a little in slippered feet and Addison draws in a sharp breath. "I'm an OB, you could be bleeding or -"

"I'll be _fine_." she begs. "Please, just -"

"Darcy?" a sleepy voice calls from the floor above them, the sound of a window opening jarringly loud in the silence. "It's late, who are you talking to?"

"No - nobody, Mom." she yells, shooting them a look. _I told you so._ "Go back to sleep."

"Do you have friends over?" the voice calls back, sterner now.

"Course not, I'm just going to bed." Darcy yells back, thrusting the small bundle into Addison's arms; she takes it automatically, her hands supporting the baby by instinct. Darcy is already pushing the door closed, her eyes, glittering with tears above damp cheeks, fixed on her baby.

"Darcy-" Addison pleads. "Honey, let us-"

"Thank you." she whispers, and then she's gone.

* * *

"That's it." Naomi says, rubbing her forehead. "She gave you her baby and shut the door."

"That's what she said." Derek points out. "Twice."

Naomi looks annoyed, even more so when she shoots Derek a grateful look. Naomi seems disgruntled at having been shaken out of bed at this hour, to open up the practice for them, because she'd forgotten her keys at home.

"What I don't get is why you didn't just go to the hospital." Naomi complains.

"Because the practice was closer and the baby didn't look so good." she repeats exasperatedly. "But you look perfect now, don't you?" she adds to the infant in her lap.

She's a little underweight, but the cold bluish tinge to her downy cheeks disappeared in the car when they swaddled her in the blankets she'd brought along, and she sucked eagerly at the bottle they gave her here. And now the nameless baby is drifting off contentedly in her lap, her dark eyes unfocused, little fingers curled around hers.

She traces the curve of a tiny ear, marveling at the pearlescent fingernails, the arch of a minute foot, the surprising strength of her voice as she lets out a cry. At how easy, hiw natural, it is to get up, lift the tiny body to her shoulder, rub soothing circles on her heaving back.

She lets out a burp impressively disproportionate to her size, and they all laugh, startled. There's something warm on her shoulder, though, and Charlotte's face twists in disgust.

"That's _silk_ , Montgomery." she says dispassionately, as Naomi grabs a wad of tissues to dab at her back.

"It'll come out." she says easily, letting Derek ease the baby from her hold as Naomi blots furiously. It's hard to be angry at the tiny little face, the hiccupy squeaks as she calms down in Derek's arms.

"Look at you." Cooper smiles. "Pro."

"We have a lot of nephews and nieces." he grins, still patting her back.

 _We._ He said _we._

A fact that, evidently, has not escaped Naomi's notice, because she smirks as she tosses her tissues in the trash. "I think a dry-clean should do it, but that dress is definitely not baby-friendly."

"I'll get you some stuff if you want." Derek volunteers, giving her the baby when she reaches out. "Clothes, formula..."

"We're good on formula." Cooper says, pointing to a box filled with samples form the last company rep he dated.

"Clothes, then. For you and -" he gestures to the baby, who is now burrowing into her.

"It's just twelve hours." Charlotte rolls her eyes. "The mom can come get the kid back in twelve hours. After that she's goin' to foster care, and they'll put her up for adoption. If you wanna go home, Montgomery, I can get a volunteer to -"

* * *

"No." Addison says quickly. "I'm fine, I can keep her for twelve hours."

"Montgomery." Charlotte rolls her eyes. She seems insistent in calling her Montgomery, almost like she's being deliberate. "Go home. Get on with whatever you were doing."

She gives them a suggestive look, and Addison flushes. Naomi is glaring at him like she used to when he kept Addison out too late and she had to get up to open the door to their apartment. It's a very familiar glare, and he grins affably in the way he knows will make her stand down.

She doesn't. Instead, she follows him out into the reception area, swatting his hand down when he presses for the call button.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you mean, what am I doing, I'm getting Addie clothes like she asked me to-"

"No," she smacks his arm. Hard. "What are you doing, screwing around with her, when she's just starting to get over you?"

A chill runs down his spine at the words, and he shakes it off. "We're married, Nae, I'm not _screwing around_."

"She walked in on you and your...your ...intern" she explodes. "She was a wreck, Derek, you have no idea how hard she's worked to build a new life here, so don't -"

"Nae." he says sweetly, stepping into the elevator. "Trust me. I know what I'm doing."

"Do you?" she hisses, darting in behind him.

"She _wants_ to give it another try." he says, irritated. They're forty - god, _forty_ \- not twenty two anymore. Where does she get off acting like Addison's ... mother?

But he knows she _was_ mostly Addison's parental influence in their years at Columbia. She was the mother of their group, the one who carried extra pencils on exam day because Mark never had one, the one who remembered Sam's inhaler that one time they all went hiking, the one who kept Addison from getting liver failure on nights out, the designated driver and maker of soup.

Of course she's angry.

"Naomi." he says solemnly, following the lights that flash in response to the remote in his hand to Addison's car. He doesn't really know what it looks like; she's always gone by the time he wakes up, and doesn't remember it from the times he's seen it in the dark driveway.

"See what I mean?" she asks, slapping the side of the bright red convertible. "Messed up."

..

She ends up coming back to the house with him, stalking in ahead of him, disappearing upstairs before he can close the door.

"You won't know where everything is." she says snidely, sliding open the closet.

"Of course I do," he bluffs. He does, kind of. Everything is always in the same place.

He sends a mental thank-you to Addison for being a drill sergeant when it comes to her clothes; he finds soft worn sweatpants in the same place they've always been, a pile of neatly folded t shirts, and the infamous Yale sweatshirt.

"So you do." Naomi concedes. "Doesn't mean I trust you."

"By all means." he says dramatically. "Feel free to supervise me."

"Oh, I will." she assures him on the stairs, looking pointedly at him as she kicks down the corner of the rug, sticking up from their hasty exit earlier. "And I'll be watching Addie too. If I see _one_ tear-"

"Addie doesn't cry."

"Well - _one_ sign of... excessive drinking, boy, and I will hurt you." she warns as he locks the door.

"I'm scared." he teases.

"I _mean_ it, Derek."

"Noted."

"Derek."

"Naomi, I promise not to hurt her." he says patiently.

"Again."

"Sorry?"

"Again," she reminds him, her eyes pools of darkness in the streetlights. "Say you won't hurt her _again_."

* * *

 _ **Clearly, inspired by episode 1.09 of PP** **, starring Batgirl and one of the biggest, most shamelessly heartbreaking plots Shonda has plagued Addison with. I was actually expecting her to end up with that baby.**_ _ **Oh, well. That's why we have fanfic.**_ _ **Please review!**_


	12. Chapter 12

**_Hi! Sorry I haven't updated in so long, but real life has been crazy busy. Hope you're still reading!_**

* * *

He's not sure it's entirely appropriate, what he's doing. But he knows Addison, knows she'll appreciate the thought if nothing else. It's always that way with her.

"You know I didn't actually give birth." she enquires, taking the flowers he's brought. She seems to realise what shes said a moment after the words leave her mouth, and her eyes flicker.

"These are for staying up all night with a baby wuen you didn't have to." he corrects her, taking and handing her a coffee cup, which she's more enthusiastic about. He looks around the office, remembering she usually has a vase on hand.

"Bottom left drawer." she says, inhaling the steam rising from her cup. "God, thank you."

"My name's Derek."

"Har har." she says sarcastically. He finds the vase, fills it with water, and sets up the flowers on a small table between the couches.

The office is very ... _her,_ with diplomas already arranged on the walls behind her desk, pictures of her and the rest of the doctors from the practice on the coffee table, one of her and Naomi he remembers from spring break their second year at Columbia. There are a few of her receiving awards, one with Vivian, one with Richard. None of them are on her desk, though.

In her private office in New York, she kept only one picture on her desk, one of them taken at the Hamptons house. It's not a professional shot, slightly blurry even. One of his sisters - he can't recall which - took it, and they're both sun dappled and laughing, knee deep in blue waves. They looked young and deliriously happy in that picture, and Addison said she liked to look at it on days when she was stuck behind her desk.

He turns his attention to the sleeping baby, reaching out to run a finger over her velvety skin. She twitches slightly, and Addison gives him a look.

"I'll take her." he suggests. "Just for a while."

She hesitates for a moment, until he holds out a bag of clothes and toiletries. The Addison he knows is probably dying for a shower and shuddering at having slept on the couch fully dressed.

"All right," she says softly, tucking the pink blanket around the baby's shoulders. "This is Derek, he's going to hold you for a little while, so I can go shower. Try not to wake up, sweetie, because he thinks he knows what he's doing, but actually -"

"Addison."

"Right. Going."

..

They're not in her office when she returns from the cramped shower, dressed in the jeans and Yankees jersey Derek brought her. She'd actually forgotten about the jersey - he bought it for her in New York as half a joke - and it mist habe made the trip from Seattle to LA with the rest of her things. She never wears jeans at work, which means Derek is either more clueless than she thought, or trying to get her to take the day off.

"What the hell are you wearing?" Sam laughs as she walks into the kitchen. The baby is lying on the kitchen table, kicking her plump little legs as she watches Cooper dangle some sort of toy for her. "Haven't seen one of those in a while."

"You look good." Derek assures her. He's standing at the counter, mixing a bottle of formula.

Naomi raises her eyebrows as she squeezes past her, so she pinches her in response.

"Ow." Naomi mutters, rubbing her arm. "Have you ever even worn that before?"

"No." she says at the same time Derek says yes.

" _Just_ the jersey." he whispers so only she can hear, and she can feel her face burning.

"I really don't want to know what he just said to you." Naomi shudders. "Do we, baby?"

"Are you just going to keep calling her baby?" asks Dell, the receptionist-child.

"She's not stayin'." Charlotte says, clicking her way into the kitchen behind Dell. "If you're done playing Momma, I'll take her."

He sees Naomi step on Charlotte's foot under the table, but the blonde shows no indication of pain as she stares at Addison.

"Sure." Addison says casually. "I was just about to feed her though, but I guess you could do that yourself."

"You thought wrong." Charlotte says, flouncing into a chair. "I'll be ready when you're done."

..

"I'm bored."

"Well, I'm having fun." he responds, rolling his eyes. "The time of my life, really. Can't remember the last time I had this much fun -"

"I get the point." she sighs, looking guilty. "But maybe you could take Charlotte's offer -"

"At that cottage hospital?" he asks, shaking his head. "No thanks."

"Well, look for another job." she snaps, irritable. He told Naomi Addison was taking the day off, which has made her short-tempered and cranky. "I never said you couldn't."

"That's right. You never say anything at all."

He knows he's being unreasonable - she's been up all night, she's emotional and tired and he knows better than to goad her. But she never discusses his presence here, avoiding the topic whenever he brings it up. He lives in the guest room, she spends the day at work and sometimes they have dinner together but for the most part he's stuck in this sunny little house working on papers he wants published.

He's numb with boredom. Last night was the most exciting thing to happen all week, unless he counts the impromptu kiss before Addison was paged...which is another thing she refuses to talk about.

"What do you want me to say?" she demands. "Not like it matters to you anyway, you just showed up here with no warning, so you can find something to do with yourself."

"You came to Seattle with no warning." he retaliates.

"And I regret it." she fires back. "I could have done without the knowledge that my husband is a cradle-robber."

"Maybe you shouldn't have come."

"Maybe _you_ shouldn't have come _here_." she replies, standing up. They're sitting at opposite ends of the couch, pretending to concentrate on their laptops. He hasn't gotten any work done since they drove back from the practice, and he's sure Addison hasn't either. "Maybe you should have done what you so obviously want to."

"Which is?"

"Be with your twelve year old." she says, making some sort of exasperated hand gesture he remembers from years of experience. "Fish. Be a...a woodchopper."

"I don't _chop wood_." he says, insulted. "It's a protected area."

"Out of all the things I just said, you take offence at woodchopper?" she splutters, slamming her laptop closed. "You are so...immature."

"Me, immature? You're the one who took off to a new city without telling anyone." he tosses back, shoving his laptop onto the couch. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to find you?"

"Maybe I didn't want you to find me!"

"Well, I did, and now I'm here, do you're going to have to get used to it." he glowers. "Like I got used to you being in Seattle."

He knows he's said the wrong thing when her face suddenly falls, her eyes filling with tears that, of course, she blinks away.

"Damn it." he mutters, reaching for her hand. She pulls it away. "Addison."

"Stop talking."

"I didn't mean it that way." he says heavily. Did he? In a way, maybe.

When she strolled back into his life, cool as you please, he was in the middle of reinventing himself. He didn't want to be the same man who had left New York. He was bound and determined that this would be a new beginning, fresh and free of any memory of what drove him away. It did take him a while, and her considerably longer, to learn how to be together again, to fall into each other's rhythm.

He'd gotten used to his solitude, and then she was there again, larger than life, apologetic and arrogant by turns, taking up his space, putting down roots and making friends and settling into a life he had intended to live alone.

But when she left again...it felt wrong. He felt bereft, astray, off balance as if someone had lopped an inch off one of his legs. He's not _used to_ her. She's part of him, ever changing and dynamic. He doesn't know what he is without her.

"But you said it that way." she says. "It sounded that way."

"I didn't mean it." he repeats.

"Then what _do_ you mean?" she asks, her eyes drying, hardening. "What part of this do you mean, Derek, or is it all still some game to you? How long are you staying this time before you decide you're bored and you go -"

"I thought we'd established that I was staying."

"Well, you don't look too happy about it."

"I'm bored."

"This...this is circular. We're not getting anywhere _arguing_ , Derek. We can't even argue effectively anymore." she laments, head dropping into her hands. "I'm sorry I'm so ... touchy."

"I can think of something else we're always effective at," he says, placing a hand on her shoulder, intending to soothe, but she gets up after a moment and his hand falls back to the couch.

"Get up." she says. She has the faraway look on her face she gets when she's planning something. He can almost see thought whirling in her head.

"Why?" he asks curiously.

"We need to get out." she says decisively. "We're going crazy in here, we'll kill each other."

"If it's another...botanical...garden thing I'm not coming." he threatens, letting her haul him to his feet.

"You'll like it." she promises. "Can you read a map?"

* * *

 ** _Okay, so I've been getting fewer and fewer reviews lately...maybe it's because everyone is busy, but I'd really love some feedback._**


	13. Chapter 13

**_This is full of Private Practice scenes, because I'm so obsessed with Addison I actually put myself through all six seasons of it. Enjoy!_**

* * *

It's beautiful out here.

Or at least, it would be if it weren't a billion degrees, and if every step didn't stir up a tiny dust cloud that settles on his sticky skin, making him feel gritty and gross. And if there weren't tiny translucent bugs in his face, apparently trying to fly up his nose. And if he didn't have to swat prickly branch things out of his face to keep them from clawing his eyes out.

And if he didn't realise the furious diatribe in his head sounds a hell of a lot like his wife whenever he drags her into the outdoors.

"If you're done grousing, get a move on," she calls out, way ahead of him on the incline. She's clad in a fancy looking jacket thing with a lot of pockets, most which he suspects are empty, and a pair of shorts that has been his sole motivation for following her up the narrow, climbing trail.

"Stop staring at my ass." she yells down.

"You can't even see me, how do you know I'm staring at your ass?"

"I can feel it."

"Can you also feel the sun?" he grumbles, catching up. She's opening a water bottle, downing half before she offers it to him.

"Maybe you'll tan." she shrugs. "Help you fit in."

"I do not tan." he says.

"Oh right, you just turn pink." she smirks. "I gave you sunblock."

"It smelled like ...fruit."

"What did you want it to smell like, motor oil and beer?"

"I didn't want to smell like a pineapple."

"Drink." she snaps, irritable.

He takes a long drink from the bottle, letting her turn around before he moves.

" _Derek_ "

He snorts with laughter at her, watching her do some sort of dusting motion that's apparently meant to get the water off her. He managed to get her right in the butt.

"What the hell?" she splutters.

"That should help you cool down." he chuckles, starting to back away as she comes for him.

"You're the one who needs to cool down." she seethes. "Oh, wait till I get my hands on you."

"Can't wait." he teases, taking advantage of her proximity to splash her again, this time across the front of her shirt.

She makes some sort of strangled shrieking sound, delving into her bag...for another bottle, which she promptly splashes in his direction, missing by half a foot.

"Come on, Addie." he taunts, laughing at her attempts to steady herself enough to take aim.

"You know, it does feel good." she smiles widely at him. "Nice and ...cool." She lowers her weapon, tugging the wet fabric of her white shirt away from her skin.

And then tips the rest of the bottle over her front.

Which pretty much renders the thin t-shirt useless. He tries to elevate his eyes enough to look at her smirking face, but he must be failing miserably.

"Come on." she barks suddenly, shocking him back to reality. "We need to keep going."

.

 _Keep going_ takes them to a large rock , overlooking the canyon below, the view so clear and unimpeded hundreds of feet down into the reddish stones and sandy terrain if the bottom.

"I told you it was worth it." she says gleefully, flinging her arms wide. The shirt has mostly dried in the hot sun, but she's taken off the jacket thing and now it's clinging to every line and curve of her body.

"Derek, the canyon view." she confirms.

"Yeah, sure." he blinks."Very...canyon-y."

"That's not even a word." she scoffs.

"It is, it means...something that looks like a canyon. Canyon-y."

"Shut up."

" _You_ shut up." he replies, stepping forward to kiss her deeply enough that her face is pink when they break apart.

Well, pinker than it was from the exertion, anyway.

"Since when do you hike?" he questions, tucking a stray bit of her hair behind an ear. She's wearing it in some sort of two-ponytailed style that manages to look cute on a grown woman.

She's even wearing sturdy, sensible lace-up boots and a bucket-like hat, two things he has never known his wife to own.

No, wait. Up close, actually...

"That's my hat." he frowns. "My fishing hat."

"I...stole it." she admits. "When I left Seattle. It's my getting fat hat."

"Your _what_ ?"

"Never mind." she say hastily. "I do hike. I hike all the time."

"How many search parties have they had to send out?" he jokes, wrapping his arms around her back and pulling her against him. "Or did you finally learn to hold a map the right side up?"

"I've always known how to read a map." she sniffs. "This trail...well, Sam showed me this trail."

"Sam Bennett?" he asks incredulously. "Sam who can't ride a bike?"

"Shut up." she says lightly, swatting his chest. "He said its...a good way, to let off steam. He used to come up here a lot when they were going through the divorce."

She's silent for a while then, but he can still feel her ribs moving against him as she breathes, slowing down as she catches her breath. His pulse stops pounding in his ears after a minute, and then it's eerily quiet except for the sound of the wind keening off the rocks.

"Never thought Sam and Nae would get divorced." she says quietly, scooting up the rock until she's sitting atop it. He clambers up beside her, warmth seeping through his skin from the heated stone.

It's still strange to him. Their group was always him and Addison, Sam and Naomi, Mark and whoever he found to fill in the blanks. He lost touch over the years, but he knows Addison didn't - he remembers sending and receiving Christmas cards, Addison telling him something or other about Maya, something about Sam's writing, something Naomi said to her in an email.

Sam and Naomi were together before he and Addison were, before he had gathered enough courage to ask out the beautiful brilliant redhead who was his lab partner. They were together four straight years, no breaks, they were engaged before graduation. Married their intern year, Maya making her appearance not two years later.

They were perfect. They moved to LA, they started a cooperative practice, they chose specialties that didn't demand spending their lives in the hospital. And now they're perfectly divorced, co-parenting like pros.

"Me neither." he says truthfully. "But they seem...happy."

"They're miserable." Addison says flatly. "They're the only ones who don't know it."

He wonders what it feels like, signing a set of papers that severs you from the person you pledged to love for the rest of your life. There are ways of dividing property, dividing assets and sharing custody, but what do you do with the memories, where do they go?

Decades worth of them, birthdays and holidays and ordinary days, what do you do with them? Who takes on the weight of the secrets shared, the losses and the successes, the dreams and plans and hopes?

He thought signing - _I'll be on the next plane out of here_ \- would be easy. Especially after what Addison did to him, to their marriage.

But she didn't leave - _she's a good doctor_ \- and he didn't sign.

And Mark came to Seattle, apologetic and arrogant all at once in the way only he can be. And he still didn't sign.

Meredith asked him to pick her. He still didn't sign.

Now he knows why.

"She's still in love with him," Addison muses. "Nae."

"Really?"

"And Sam's...he's a mess. I think he's having a midlife crisis."

"Is it that time of the year already?" he jokes, and she laughs. Sam's swaying moods were legendary, even in med school. He's done this sort of rash thing before, leaving the surgical programme, going into internal medicine.

"He just...he gave up on them, Derek." she sighs. "He just asked for a divorce out of the blue, and Nae was devastated...but she still didn't call me."

"Wait, are you upset about their divorce, or that you didn't get all the dirty details?"

"Wh - no, not like that. I meant I was such an awful friend, she didn't even feel like she could tell me about her marriage blowing up."

"It's not like Sam told me."

"That's different." she frowns. "You're...men. You don't call long distance to cry. Most of you, anyway."

"No, I don't think we do." he replies. "Then again, we didn't call him Secret Sam for nothing."

"We did?"

"Mark and I did."

"That's really rude." she says primly. "Just because you two were in some sort of bromance -"

" _What_ ?" he hoots with laughter. "What?"

"A bromance." she clarifies, turning scarlet.

"You have been living here way too long," he laughs, wiping tears from his eyes.

"I heard it from Maya." she says defensively. "She said that she used to think her parents were MFEO."

"You lost me there."

"Made for each other." Addison explains.

"Teenagers."

"I know." she sighs.

"Are we? MFEO?"

"No one else seems to like us," she shrugs, he shoulder poking into his ribs. "We're stuck with each other, I suppose."

"I like being stuck with you."

"Me too." she smiles, sliding a hand into his hair, and then he's not really thinking anymore.

..

"Derek," she hisses, swatting him with his shirt. "Derek, I heard something."

"Mmph?"

"Get _up_." She definitely heard something right now, a muffled scraping, cracking sound.

Like someone is coming up the trail.

The next thirty seconds are a blur of scrambling for clothes, getting in each others way and mostly managing to get themselves decent before a man stumbles out of the bushes, gasping for breath.

"Are you okay?" Derek frowns, looking at the man. He's clearly hurt, shallow scrapes running up and down his forearms, blood drying on his temple.

"Car." he pants. "Heather's in the car, can you - I can't get a signal."

She checks both their phones while Derek gets the man to settle down, and it turns out that he and his wife were in a car crash on the road below them, and that she's trapped in the car.

"There's blood." he crying. "A lot of...blood, and she can't move, she needs help."

"We're doctors." Derek says gently. "Chris -is that right? Yeah, so we need you to show us where your car went over, so we can help your wife."

"She's pregnant." he says desperately. "The baby..."

"Well, lucky for you, we've got just the woman for the job." Derek mutters "Let's go - and the next time I say I'm bored, Addison, just to be clear - I don't want _this_ much excitement.

* * *

 ** _Okay, so...I basically just started writing. And didn't stop, so it might be a little weird, but I've been blocked for weeks about all my stories, so it's a start at least._** ** _I haven't forgotten the loose threads from earlier in the story, don't worry._** ** _Please review!_**


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